Posts Tagged ‘Milton Friedman’

The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.

(Milton Friedman)

Walter Russell Mead über den urkapitalistischen Billigdiscounter Walmart:

Walmart and its Big Box friends are making the world a greener, more sustainable place. This isn’t because of any PR stunts or corporate green initiatives they may have going; it’s because they are relentlessly focused on profit and efficiency. It is their cutthroat capitalism not their sense of corporate citizenship that will save us — if anything can.

Walmart is helping to save the planet because it’s tough and realistic and focused like a laser on the bottom line. Giving customers what they want at low prices has made Walmart an irresistible force in the market. Every sock factory in China, every flatware manufacturer in Bangladesh wants to crack the Walmart market. Some purchasers buy by the crate and the carton; Walmart buys in the millions and billions.

That means you, and everyone else trying to sell to Walmart, have to spend all your time figuring out how to produce the same product with less. Walmart’s ruthless focus on reducing prices is driving producers everywhere to cut the costs of production: to switch to cheaper materials, use less packaging, cut down on waste of all kinds and to consolidate and rationalize both production and distribution. The result is a steady and inexorable decline in humanity’s impact on the environment for every unit of GDP.

Mehr auf dem Blog von Walter Russell Mead beim American Interest.

Frage mich derweil, ob es in Deutschland Untersuchungen zu dem Thema gibt. Die halbe Nation beschäftigt sich mit dem Ausstoß von CO2, da müsste es doch Studien geben, die den CO2-Footprint der hiesigen Billigheimer auseinanderpflücken.

Milton Friedman on Legalizing Drugs:

1960’s LSD Warning Commercial (via):