In response to an article on the Motley Fool about a quote by Milton Friedman:
"There is one and only one social responsibility of business -- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game."
The author feels that our culture has developed a "Gordon Gecko" mentality of greed at all costs, but the fallacy is that there are costs to excessive greed.
Here is the article http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/10/04/trashing-milton-friedman.aspx
And my response:
There is a tremendous difference between "unrestrained capitalism" and the Keynesian interventionism we still operate under.
Buffet's comment that "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." implies there are negative consequences to negative greedy actions. Either to the corporate bottom line, civil litigation with monetary penalties, or criminal charges.
Government bailouts and golden parachutes with no penalty clauses simply sustain the belief that there are no consequences.
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