Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good

Since even before Milton Friedman famously contended that the social responsibility of business is to maximize profits, there has been a vigorous debate between those who believe corporations should put purported notions of socially responsible behavior ahead of profits and those of who are skeptical that doing so leads to desirable results. One of the chief tenets of the Friedman-esque position is that responsible corporate behavior is profit maximizing. That is, the private interests of the corporation and the public interest are typically congruent.In this excellent analysis, John Hood convincingly demonstrates that compassion and capitalism are not inconsistent, but go hand in hand. Hood combines statistical evidence with telling anecdotes drawn from a plethora of industries to show that profit maximizing firms consistently also advance the common good. Indeed, by the end of Hood's text, one is ineluctably lead to the conclusion that for profit corporations have done far more good than government or nonprofits. Highly recommended.