Davos Man

by Peter S. Goodman

The economist Milton Friedman set the revolution in motion9 in 1970 with an essay in The New York Times Magazine whose title distilled its essential content: “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” To Friedman, the market was sacred. Left to its own devices, it would determine the best use for investment more efficiently than any bureaucrat or do-gooder interest group. He laid down the intellectual infrastructure for Davos Man, deploying the parlance of economic theory to give license to unmitigated greed. Executives could justify no end of abominable behavior—poisoning the air, accelerating climate change, firing American workers, and moving production overseas—on the grounds that not doing these things amounted to ripping off shareholders. Maximizing profit was not merely okay; it was a moral imperative.