Why is business the business of business?

Answer 1

The economist Milton Friedman said that the "social responsibility" of business is to increase its profits, and nothing else. He was responding to a then-growing body of thought that businesses had all sorts of other responsibilities, ranging from their alleged responsibilities to the communities in which they operated, to their alleged responsibilities to the environment. The notion of a business's "social responsibility" has gained widespread acceptance in the last few decades.

Engaging in "corporate social responsibility" projects is probably good public relations and it keeps environmental and other activists off business's back, but it diverts funds from the business's actual profit-making activities and so it lowers profits and diverts them to the undeserving, instead of to the investors, who actually risked their own money to get the maximum return on their invested capital. So a corporation town gets a "free" park that is actually paid for with money that should have gone to the shareholders.

Corporate social responsibility has in some cases been defined and mandated by law, by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, whose mission is to suck firms dry in fines, penalties and expensive regulations that don't add significant value to the company, or to anyone's life.

I think Friedman was right; a business should be concerned with making a profit. What do you think?