In Milton Friedman's essay "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", the main theme or motif that appears is the importance of maintaining a pure form of capitalism, and economy that is autonomous from the government. Friedman stresses that businesses do not have a 'social responsibility', but the 'invisible hand' of private enterprise forces business owners to be responsible for your own actions, therefore making it difficult to exploit workers. To put it simply, government regulations on business that force that business to act in a way that it otherwise wouldn't have is socialism, and socialism is evil. The cultural values that are most important to Friedman are individualism and meritocracy. In fact, those are the values that businessmen in the 1950's spent millions of dollars on propaganda promoting as the true 'American' values; values that promote capitalism and profits, values that make labor unions seem like an unnecessary evil. Personally, I do not see a conflict between business and social responsibility. Friedman explains that only people have responsibilities, therefore, businesses do not have responsibility, but the people running them do. Obviously, this is not true, because the government, AND the people running it have responsibilities to cater to the needs of the American people. Friedman also argues that the government must impose taxes on businesses because their policies are too unpopular among the people. "What it amounts to is an assertion that those who favor the taxes and expenditures in question have failed to persuade a majority of their fellow citizens to be of like mind and that they are seeking to attain by undemocratic procedures what they cannot attain by democratic proce­dures." Huh. Those who benefit from taxes (those who benefit from government aid programs like welfare, social security, medicaid, etc.) make up the majority of the American population. Friedman speaks from the viewpoint of the wealthy business elite - the people who popularize capitalism so they can augment their already bursting pocketbooks. Friedman is indeed a participant, or a victim of, a propaganda campaign beginning in post WWII America, when growing labor unions threatened the ideals of capitalism. I think businesses, as a facet of American society, have as much social responsibility as religious institutions, hospitals, and schools.