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  1. @derekc06
    • derekc06scouted3 years ago
      The New York Times CompanyKurt Andersen9/11/2012 min
      The New York Times Company

      In the real world, where successful businesses are operated somewhere in the broad range between break-even and absolute-maximum profitability, there was and is always leeway for being a bit unnecessarily fair and responsible — to accept slightly smaller profit margins to fulfill implicit obligations to employees, customers, communities, society at large, decency itself. But while economists still argue over Friedman’s theories, his hot take 50 years ago for nonspecialists — the Friedman doctrine — turned a capitalist truism (profits are essential) into a simple-minded, unhinged, socially destructive monomania (only profits matter). In “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge is redeemed when he abandons his nasty profit-mad view of life — and his name became a synonym for miserliness. Likewise, a century later, in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the banker Mr. Potter is the evil, unredeemable, un-American villain. Here was Milton Friedman telling businesspeople that they’d been tricked by the liberal elite, that Scrooge and Potter were heroes they ought to emulate.

    • derekc06scouted3 years ago

      What is it about interacting with social media that makes people so susceptible to conspiratorial thinking? It seems more prevalent than ever, though maybe that perception is influenced by the current level of interest media outlets have taken in such things. Or maybe it's the outsized platform to share our thoughts and theories that social media has given us, thoughts that were once withheld from the outer branches of our social networks.

    • derekc06scouted3 years ago
      The New York Times CompanyNICHOLAS KRISTOF9/12/204 min
      The New York Times Company