• Mikie
    6.1k
    The discussions of the “social responsibilities of business” are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but “business” as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom.

    Presumably, the individuals who are to be responsible are businessmen, which means individual proprietors or corporate executives. Most of the discussion of social responsibility is directed at corporations, so in what follows I shall mostly neglect the individual proprietor and speak of corporate executives.

    In a free‐enterprise, private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employe of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose—for example, a hospital or school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services.

    In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.

    The whole justification for permitting the corporate executive to be selected by the stockholders is that the executive is an agent serving the interests of his principal. This justification disappears when the corporate executive imposes taxes and spends the proceeds for “social” purposes. He becomes in effect a public employe, a civil servant, even though he remains in name an employe of private enterprise. On grounds of political principle, it is intolerable that such civil servants—insofar as their actions in the name of social responsibility are real and not just window‐dressing—should be selected as they are now. If they are to be civil servants, then they must be selected through a political process. If they are to impose taxes and make expenditures to foster “social” objectives, then political machinery must be set up to guide the assessment of taxes and to determine through a political process the objectives to be served.

    This is the basic reason why the doctrine of “social responsibility” involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses.

    ----

    Friedman, of course. I'm pairing this with Where Do The Profits Go? I think the connection is obvious.

    I think the above really captures the mindset that's come to dominate corporate America. Interested in various takes. I plan on playing Devil's advocate here.
    1. Agree with the above? (4 votes)
        Yes
        25%
        No
        25%
        Somewhat
        50%
  • Deus
    320
    I do not see how any self interested business entity/person has any obligation to social responsibility unless it affects its profits.

    Adam Smith covered this concept pretty well.
  • Mikie
    6.1k
    Adam Smith covered this concept pretty well.Deus

    Yeah? Please point me to the relevant passages you have in mind.
  • Deus
    320



    It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

    - Adam Smith
  • Mikie
    6.1k


    That’s a well known quote. But have you actually read Adam Smith? Was this what you meant by “covered it well”?

    What you describe seems to be what he described as the “vile maxim”:

    All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

    He says of “merchants and manufacturers” that they’re….

    an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the publick, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

    He was writing before the rise of corporations, of course.

    Elsewhere:

    The interest of the dealer, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respect different from, and even opposite to, that of the publick. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the publick; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they would normally be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.

    He goes on and on.

    I would try to resist the influence of mainstream libertarian portrayals of Smith.
  • Deus
    320
    I’ve read enough to understand his most important points.

    Here is a brief summary of his overall thought.


    Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. ...
    But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
    And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.
  • Mikie
    6.1k


    I’m very familiar with Smith. I don’t consider this a summary of his “overall thought,” nor do I see much connection with the OP or what we were discussing.
  • Mikie
    6.1k
    Gotta agree with Chomsky here regarding Smith:

    Just read it. He’s pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.

    He also made remarks which ought to be truisms about the way states work. He pointed out that its totally senseless to talk about a nation and what we would nowadays call “national interests.” He simply observed in passing, because it’s so obvious, that in England, which is what he’s discussing — and it was the most democratic society of the day — the principal architects of policy are the “merchants and manufacturers,” and they make certain that their own interests are, in his words, “most peculiarly attended to,” no matter what the effect on others, including the people of England who, he argued, suffered from their policies. He didn’t have the data to prove it at the time, but he was probably right.
  • Deus
    320
    Don’t know much about this Chomsky guy but looking at the quotes you’ve provided he seems like the typical academical scholar divorced from reality.

    This should answer the question in your OP

    From The Wealth of Nations


    Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
    Chapter V.
    Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.
    Chapter V, p. 38.
    In reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion, between the respective values of the different values of the different metals in the coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin.
    Chapter V, p. 50.
    The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.
    Chapter VI, p. 58.
    As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
    Chapter VI, p. 60.
    A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
    Chapter VII, p. 67.
    The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
    Chapter VII, p. 69.
    Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
    Chapter VII, p. 72.
    In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
    Chapter VIII, p. 80.
    We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
    Chapter VIII, p. 80.
    A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
    Chapter VIII, p. 81
  • Mikie
    6.1k
    Don’t know much about this Chomsky guy but looking at the quotes you’ve provided he seems like the typical academical scholar divorced from reality.Deus

    Yeah, sorry, but a comment like this is embarrassing. Considering Chomsky has actually read Smith, unlike you — apart from the fact that he’s an internationally respected scholar.

    Also, nothing in your copy-and-paste job has the slightest relevance to the OP. If you want to try to draw the connection, do so. Otherwise you’re just quoting incoherently.

    I recommend *reading* Adam Smith instead of pasting random passages from a Website. It’s transparently obvious you haven’t yet done so, and I’m not interested in posturing.
  • Deus
    320
    I was hoping that you would connect the dots yourself as any good philosopher should do.

    Also note that it is not a criticism.

    As for my comment about Chomsky / he has his fair share of critics and my comment is not meant to make me one of his newest critics just a passing observation as I am unfamiliar with his work nor see the appeal just yet.
  • Mikie
    6.1k
    I was hoping that you would connect the dots yourself as any good philosopher should do.Deus

    There are no dots to connect — which is why you can’t explain what they are.

    Next time, don’t just copy and paste from a Website and claim that it answers something if you don’t know yourself.

    What was the “question” which those quotes are supposed to answer, anyway? Can you even explain that?

    The version of him that’s given today is just ridiculous. But I didn’t have to any research to find this out. All you have to do is read. If you’re literate, you’ll find it out.

    (Chomsky)
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    I'm in agreement with Chomsky. Corporations are part of our community and should be responsible to that community for how they conduct business and what they produce. Their capacity to do harm to ordinary citizens can be immeasurable. And they should be appropriately taxed and their power curtailed. News Limited, for instance, has too great a stranglehold on world media and is poisoning the world like those old school leather tanneries which dumped toxic waste into the drinking supply. There are laws against toxic waste, where are the laws against toxic disinformation?
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    where are the laws against toxic disinformation?Tom Storm
    FaceBook committed to fact checking.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    There are laws against toxic waste, where are the laws against toxic disinformation?Tom Storm

    How do you see such laws working? Presumably, absent of investigations, no judge is going to somehow know what is 'true' so the law would have to require some standard of evidence before publication, but what standard would prevent the sort of misinformation someone like Murdoch pushes that wouldn't also shut down corporate whistleblowers, wikileaks, or investigative journalism in general?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    FaceBook committed to fact checking.god must be atheist

    Yeah, 'cos that really sorts out the corporate control over information, put a private corporation in control of information...
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    No idea, Isaac. On this, and many other matters, I only have aspirational views. Can it be done? I'd like to see us try, but perhaps not. I wrote it down as a provocation.
  • Isaac
    10.3k


    I think the problem is that 'truth' needs to be assessed. We cannot just 'see' it, we need to discover it. That requires an institution.

    Newspapers are already supposed to publish only well-evidenced information. They don't, because there's an economic and political incentive to lie. How would a fact-checking institution be any less exposed to exactly the same economic and political incentives?

    Basically, we can't seem to escape the fact that we (as individuals) are not capable of assessing the raw data ourselves, so we must trust an institution to do so. That institution will be exposed to economic and political incentives. Well, we might as well trust the newspaper in the first place.

    One way forward I can see is to make it more difficult for conflicts of interest to be hidden. That way we could at least make a more informed choice over which institution to trust.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    How would a fact-checking institution be any less exposed to exactly the same economic and political incentives?Isaac

    Yes, we could have an infinite regress of fact checking.

    One way forward I can see is to make it more difficult for conflicts of interest to be hidden.Isaac

    Yep, certainly one option.

    Often with these things if the public were just more discerning... (ie, if they shared my values) everything would improve. Murdoch would go broke and certain politicians would never see office.

    Of course, the other option is litigation. Harmful stories can be identified and dealt with - a la Alex Jones. And it interests me that Tucker Carlson managed to avoid legal strife by arguing that his show is entrainment, which no one believes anyway.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    Often with these things if the public were just more discerning... (ie, if they shared my values) everything would improve.Tom Storm

    Yes. I think the problem has been mis-targeted. The narrative here seems to be that people are just stupid and we need to control the media so they don't lead the stupid people on. I think this frames the problems wrong. We need to be asking why people are motivated to believe something like a Murdoch paper (or worse, the likes of Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson) in the first place.

    Personally I don't believe anyone is so stupid as to think that in normal circumstances a talk-show pundit or journalist is better placed than a relevant university professor to inform them on some subject matter. No one is unaware of the process of data accumulation, the general way knowledge works...

    So the question is not how do Murdoch, Jones and Carlson get away with it, the question is what's gone wrong with the universities (etc) that means ordinary people (who fully understand how knowledge acquisition works), have decided their obvious status as repositories of that knowledge is in question.

    My personal answer to that is role social media now plays as arbiter of truth. The battles are no longer fought between academics, they're fought on social media, so there's been a shift in what qualifies a person to be part of the debate, and it's not their academic qualification.

    This changes the field over which the battles are fought, but also changes the weapons used. Evidence, peer review, methodology... No longer as useful as 'likes', and a whipped up mob.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    My personal answer to that is role social media now plays as arbiter of truth. The battles are no longer fought between academics, they're fought on social media, so there's been a shift in what qualifies a person to be part of the debate, and it's not their academic qualification.Isaac

    Agree. I also think that because so many people feel like they are foot soldiers in a culture war these days odd alliances are forged - it's the enemy of my enemy is my friend. People who don't like Trump, voted for him because he hated the right people - ie, soft-cock, virtue signalling leftists. Result: public discourse coarsens and the right becomes less nuanced.

    Seems to me that people often profess views for aesthetic reasons rather than because they are convinced of their truth. They want to belong to a camp that puts on a show and be rocked along by a certain energy. I spoke to a Trump voter in 2018 who told me, "How could you not want to ride this train, it's wild!?'

    Do you think there's a practical way out of our mutually destructive ideological lynch mobs?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    I also think that because so many people feel like they are foot soldiers in a culture war these daysTom Storm

    Yeah, not only odd alliances, but the beliefs become tokens of group membership. To strongly profess a belief that X is to be s member of that group. Of course, belief expression has always been one of the tokens used to identity group membership, but social media has exaggerated its role to the point where it's basically the only token that's recognised. I'm probably going to sound like an old curmudgeon saying this, but I remember a time not too long ago where I might have a pretty heated argument with a colleague on some matter over which we disagreed, but we'd neither of us even dream of trying to delegitimise the other. We knew, even through the tension, that we were, in some ways, still part of the same group (privileged white male ivory-towered professer I'm afraid), but the point is that other tokens rendered us as being in the same group despite our clashing beliefs.

    Do you think there's a practical way out of our mutually destructive ideological lynch mobs?Tom Storm

    No. It's a putting the genie back in the bottle problem. We have to learn to live with it now. The trouble with any fix is that the nature of the problem means that any fix will be rejected. We could reign in social media, but who's going to agree to that? We could put restrictions on certain debate platforms (deliberately do what should be done naturally), but others will just pop up instead and become more popular.

    I think it's a root and branch problem. There's something quite fundamentally missing in most people's lives which makes them reach for, and cling to, these groups against their better judgment. My guess is the loss of community and purpose, but that's a whole 'nother thread...
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Yeah, 'cos that really sorts out the corporate control over information, put a private corporation in control of information...Isaac

    You're right. I wrote it down as provocation.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Yeah, not only odd alliances, but the beliefs become tokens of group membership. To strongly profess a belief that X is to be s member of that group. Of course, belief expression has always been one of the tokens used to identity group membership, but social media has exaggerated its role to the point where it's basically the only token that's recognised. I'm probably going to sound like an old curmudgeon saying this, but I remember a time not too long ago where I might have a pretty heated argument with a colleague on some matter over which we disagreed, but we'd neither of us even dream of trying to delegitimise the other. We knew, even through the tension, that we were, in some ways, still part of the same group (privileged white male ivory-towered professer I'm afraid), but the point is that other tokens rendered us as being in the same group despite our clashing beliefs.Isaac

    I was going to make a forced joke, "where can you buy these tokens you speak so highly of?" but it wouldn't have been funny, and mostly I would have sounded stupid.

    Instead I would like to inject that while I like this "token" metaphor, I would use, if I were you, a different metaphor, "totem". Totem inspires not only a group identity or belonging, but it also has a spiritual or metaphysical element that makes the group identity inalienable. Totem also includes a commonly agreed but weak protection by the group for its members -- via physical, natural ways, and also via some supernatural ways.

    Tokens don't do that.

    We could imbue some other newfangled social media phenomenon with one-word descriptions such as "taboo", "tattoo", "voodoo", and "doodoo", this latter to describe posts like this paragraph here by me.
  • PhilosophyRunner
    302
    Seems to me that people often profess views for aesthetic reasons rather than because they are convinced of their truth.Tom Storm

    Yes! But I will add to that people also profess views for values driven preferences over factual truth. Any claimed "facts" that support their values are true, any that oppose their values are false.

    I had a few conversations that went this way during the pandemic:

    Them: "I won't get the vaccine"
    Me: "Why?"
    Them "Data X, arguement Y, so it is safer to not get the vaccine"
    Me: "Data X is wrong because of ... argument Y is wrong because of... so it is safer to get the vaccine"
    Them: "But the point is I would prefer to take the risk of dying of covid rather than have the vaccine. I value choosing not to take the vaccine more than I value the risk to my life from covid."

    I got so many "but the point is..." after having successfully argued against their original justification. And "the point" was ultimately not about facts or truth. I could not have given a factual or scientific argument to refute their ultimate point, because it was not a factual or scientific point.

    But in order to justify their real "point," they jumped on whatever "facts" that support their values/preferences (in quotation marks because they are often of dubious veracity) . And hence enormous time was wasted having a argument about evidence based facts and science when actually that was never the point in the first place, on their side. "Facts" were just a tool on their part to support their preferences and values - if it supported their values it was a good "fact," otherwise it was a bad "fact."
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    I wrote it down as provocation.god must be atheist

    I see. Then consider me provoked.

    Instead I would like to inject that while I like this "token" metaphor, I would use, if I were you, a different metaphor, "totem".god must be atheist

    Interesting idea, unfortunately 'token' is already much used in the literature on the subject and I don't think I have sufficient sway to start a new trend.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    We must transmute water into wine! That's what we need to do!
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    But in order to justify their real "point," they jumped on whatever "facts" that support their values/preferencesPhilosophyRunner

    And what do you see as being wrong with that?
  • PhilosophyRunner
    302
    What I see wrong is that a fact is not correct just because it supports someone's values.

    Facts about whether you are more likely to die if you take a vaccine or not, is not dependent on your preferences or values.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    What I see wrong is that a fact is not correct just because it supports someone's values.

    Facts about whether you are more likely to die if you take a vaccine or not, is not dependent on your preferences.
    PhilosophyRunner

    A fact that isn't correct isn't a fact though, is it?

    Out of the facts (propositions which are correct), what is wrong with selecting those which support your preferences/values. How else would you have us select facts?
  • PhilosophyRunner
    302
    Oh I agree. Hence my use of "fact" in quotation marks in my original post, to mean people who use the term "facts" whether or not what they then utter subsequently is correct, simply because what they subsequently utter supports their values and preferences.

    So if I believe in not taking a vaccine, I will look for anything that would support my values, then claim those as facts. I would do so even if I myself did not believe they were correct. I would do so simply because claiming them as "facts" furthers the chance of my getting my way with my values and preferences.

    And that is the problem.

    You may then take time to refute what I called a "fact." But you are wasting your time, because even I don't believe it to be true. I am simply using it as a tool to further my values and preferences.

    So whole discussions on supporting and refuting facts and evidence happen, when the "real point" is something entirely different - values and preferences. That is what I noticed happening in a lot of discussions I have had recently (not on this forum, I may add).
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