Friedman stated that the only cases in recorded history in which the masses have escaped from gruelling poverty “are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.”
It is a truism often stated by economists and politicians and widely accepted as true by the public. The question is: did the masses escape from gruelling poverty because of capitalism or in spite of it?
Continue reading Capitalism creates widespread prosperity – or does it?
Milton friedman
The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits
The New York Times Magazine
September 13, 1970
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system,” I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who
discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way
are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
Continue reading Milton Friedman: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits
