Friedman’s Traditional View of Business Responsibility

According to the view of Friedman, the main aim or goal of a business is to stay in competition and maximize profit within the rules of the game. I want to discuss this because this is exactly what my uncle, who I used to work with a few months earlier at his shop, had. He has a grocery shop with 7 employees working in it. According to him, he has to expand his business and make money. He do not take interest in donating to charities. He has a really clear view about business and social work being two completely different things. I argues it with him once and he said that what he believes in to give more jobs to people by expanding his business and pay proper taxes that contributes to the social activities carried out by the government. He said that his responsibility is not to involve his business in social work activities as it would adversely affect his business.

I personally am not against social work by businesses but I must confess that my uncle’s view are not completely wrong. I mean if all businesses try to maximize their profits while staying within the rules and pay full taxes, we may be able to enable our governments to fulfil their responsibilities efficiently in regards to providing education, health and other facilities to the citizens.