Langston Hughes

Mr. Vickers

Humanities 191

15 December 2004

“HOW SHOULD I MAKE MONEY?”

Businesses nowadays do what they have to do to get the job done, as far as making profit and succeeding in their goals. They complete these goals by any means necessary and in my opinion they should be held responsible for their actions. Sure what they do can sometime bring in profit, but looking ahead, they’re doing things against public interest and in the long run it will ruin their companies. They should allow us as a people to know what’s going on so we can better informed. In their eyes what we don’t know won’t hurt us, but in actuality it does

In Friedmans “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” Friedman argues that the manager is an agent of the shareholders, responsible mainly for the profit they seek, and for following the rules of society, being both legal and ethical, meaning they there is no fraud or coercion and there is free competition. He considers the talk of “social responsibility of business” to be misguided, indicative of a trend toward socialism. He argues that to decide to sacrifice profit for some collective social good is to, in effort, collect taxes and decide how they are to be spent, which is reserved for the political process. Non-elected company managers should not be doing this. In business, Friedman believes, people do what they choose to do, while in politics the majority rules. But that political process should be kept to a minimum and kept out of business.

Friedman believes this applies also to “the newer phenomenon of calling upon stockholders to require corporations to exercise social responsibility.” This is just one group trying to get some other people to do what that group considers important. He does allow, though, that a proprietor not a corporation is free to spend his money on good causes, even though it may affect customers, etc., because he has not monopoly. (If it is too costly he will cease to be competitive.)

Finally, Friedman believes that some of the “social responsibility “ that is talked about is just “window-dressing”