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Milton Friedman on Business, profit, and social responsibility

In fact they are—or would be if they or any one else took them seriously—preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
Column, 1970, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, Section SM, p. 17
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  1. I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile under the title "The Fragility of Freedom." The essence of the talk was that freedom was a very fragile thing and that what destroyed it more than anything else was central control; that in order to maintain freedom, you had to have free markets, and that free markets would work best if you had political freedom. So it was essentially an anti-totalitarian talk.
    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
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  2. But as a matter of practical experience, no complicated society can be run solely on the command principle. It’s just impossible. And therefore, in one sense, the market is essential. There’s no way of avoiding it.
    The Open Mind
    Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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  3. I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. ( … ) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism.
    Reflections on the Great Depression
    Interview, 2002
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