In 1970, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an historical text to General Motors’ stockholders, where he asserted that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. This idea is consistent with the theories he participated in popularizing with the Chicago School: homo-economicus (the human being is an agent who is consistently rational and narrowly self-interested), free enterprise, and minimal state intervention. These theories echoed strongly among large corporations, institutions (Friedman won the Nobel Prize in 1976) and inspired public policies of business deregulations in Chile (Friedman was the economic advisor of Pinochet), in the United Kingdom and in the United States in the 1980’s. Thanks to Friedman’s influence, business was exonerated from its negative externalities leading to the disastrous environmental issues we are facing today.
For this piece “The burning Friedman '', we burnt five examples of the New York Time’s article about the famous Friedman’s position. Each paper is at a different stage of combustion. The last piece is only ashes. Fire was used to show how Friedman’s ideas have turned the world into a burning place.
Fifty years after this speech, it’s time for those ideas to go back to what they always should have been: ashes.