The Social Responsibility Of Business Is To Increase Its Profit By Milton Friedman Analysis

In Milton Friedman’s “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, Friedman concludes that it’s the duty of a business and its corporate executives to pursue legal profits by any means for their shareholders over social welfare. Currently, in the US, there are many incidents of businesses doing exactly that, in ways that would cause many to disagree with Friedman’s conclusion; however, I still agree. One of Friedman’s points is that if a business is doing something legally against the will of its society, then it is up to that society to change the laws democratically. It stands to reason, then that it is not the duty of a corporation to change its business practices to better society, but the people’s duty to democratically …show more content…
According to Friedman, CEOs rise to their position by excelling at one thing, making the company money and they wouldn’t have the skills needed to efficiently use the funds towards social causes. Therefore, even if businesses were responsible for social welfare it wouldn’t make sense for a CEO to use shareholder money to such an end. He may be correct in general, but I think it’s reasonable to assume someone with skills to become CEO of a company would have useful organizational skills as well as the type of connections to make an impact on society if they decided to use company funds. I would still agree that this should not be done, however. Even if a certain CEO was proficiently using company resources to the benefit of society, it is highly likely that a CEO cutting profits, for any reason, would be fired and replaced with someone who more focused on company …show more content…
Friedman’s conclusion relies on certain market structures that have been destroyed in the United States by allowing corporations to have so much influence in the laws that limit them. So, if there comes a point where the buying power of a business outweighs a society’s ability to find a democratic solution then, of course, we would have a problem. Even so, many corporate decisions we see made in the US seem to hurt companies in the long run with negative brand recognition, the destruction of communities, and the general decline of society if everyone is allowed to dump waste into oceans, deforest for infrastructure, aggressively market to kids, pollute the surroundings, etc. This debate eventually takes the form of “whose responsibility is it” and I believe Friedman and I agree that responsibility should lie with the shareholders that decide what to put their money into. In the US the responsibility lies with the voters since many boards don’t seem to care about social welfare, and since of course, the corporations job is simply to make that board