On the Social Responsibilities of Business: Contra Milton Friedman

Product availability, product price, product safety, wage levels, pollution levels and many more issues directly affecting the social community are the results of policy decisions made by business. Yet the social responsibility thereby incumbent on business is one which is by no means universally acknowledged by the decision makers, some of whom maintain that such policy decisions must centre primarily on the strictly economic consideration. This view has found a spokesman in Milton Friedman, a prolific writer on the subject, whose essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” serves as perhaps the clearest statement of this view. The purpose of this article is to examine the arguments of Milton Friedman and to refute them.