An Appropriate Ethical Model for Business and a Critique of Milton Friedman’s Thesis

Economist Milton Friedman drew the wrath of anti-market business ethicists for his controversial 1970 essay “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Business leaders seeking an ethical standard consistent with the free market should look elsewhere, however, because Friedman’s essay seems to exculpate a practice antithetical to the free market—corporate lobbying for special government favors.