50 Years of Blaming Milton Friedman. Here's Another Idea.
Friedman, a free-market ideologue, published an essay 50 years ago this week in The Times Magazine in which he argued that corporations should not go beyond the letter of the law to combat discrimination or reduce pollution or maintain community institutions. Corporations, he said, have no social responsibilities except the sacred responsibility to make money....
Critics have been fighting ever since to get corporations to acknowledge broader responsibilities. Its the wrong battle. Instead of redefining the role of the corporation, we need to redefine the role of the state....
Government remains the most powerful means to express our collective will. The necessary solution is to create stronger incentives for good behavior and laws against bad behavior....
Government also needs to do more to support economic growth. Friedmans negative vision of government has helped to obscure the ways the public sector can help the private sector, for example by investing in education, infrastructure and research....
Corporations have a valuable role to play in American society, and they contribute primarily by trying to make money. Friedmans narrow point is mostly correct. The missing part is the role of government in ensuring that those profits do not come at the expense of society....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/milton-friedman-essay.html