The Purpose of Business

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Milton Friedman, Free to Choose

This is Friedman at his most controversial. I agree with him. They don’t have two or three different ways of scoring a basketball game and there should only be one way of scoring a business: How profitable is it over the long run. Most of the caring about equality or the environment is PR. Many people are taken in by this as consumers but as investors they are much more focused on value.


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