Social Responsibility Redux

Julian Sanchez | October 28, 2005

Our October issue's Milton Friedman/John Mackey/T.J. Rodgers debate on corporate social responsibility provoked more reader mail than any other cover story I can recall; now it seems to have kicked off a blogospheric discussion. Tyler Cowen appears to view Friedman's famous dictum—that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profit—as more of a rhetorical move than a genuine position. Professor Bainbridge disagrees, and links to a paper defending the Friedman view. And Mark Kleiman offers what strikes me as a pretty good reductio of that position.