Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman (/ˈfriːdmən/ ⓘ; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy.[4] With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism before shifting their focus to new classical macroeconomics in the mid-1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

• Friedman criticised corporate social responsibility, most famously in an op-ed in the New York Times Magazine in 1970.[127] Friedman argued that businesses often used claims about social responsibility to increase returns and described them as "hypocritical window dressing".[127] Managers were also poorly prepared to make decisions about social causes and these outlays diverted funds that belonged instead to shareholders. Friedman believed that only monopolistic corporations could routinely make altruistic expenditures on social responsibility, because in a competitive market such costs would undermine the business.
  • The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman that holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.[1] This shareholder primacy approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to increase its profits and maximize returns to shareholders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine (shareholder value)

open letter from 1990 to Bill Bennett against the War On Drugs

Free Market proponent?

• Murray Rothbard didn't think so.