What's a business for? And why is there skepticism about business among younger generations today?

What do we say to the notion that business is based on greed? It creates consumerism and contributes to growing economic inequality.

I'll answer these questions and more with our guest, Dr. Jim Odison, Professor of Business Ethics at Notre Dame.

I'm your host Scott Ray, and this is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Jim, welcome. Really great to have you with us. Appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be with you. All right. So why do you think there is such skepticism about business being a force for good in the world today, especially among younger generations?

This seems to be especially true or the perception is especially true of entrepreneurs who

are widely seen as one to create a product, get in, make a bag of money, and get out,

and do something else?

It's a good question, and it's a perennial question.

It's one that keeps coming back and coming up.

And I think, to be fair, there are entrepreneurs and business people for whom that is the motivation.

They want to get in, make their quick buck and get out.

And I think that's always been the case.

But I think there's more to the reason why so many people are, especially young people, as you say, are skeptical of business and skeptical of a search for profit in business.

I think there's more to it than just the existence of some people who want to make a quick buck.

Part of the reason, I think, is that for many young people especially, they live in a world, we live in a time when there's more wealth in the world total than there has ever been in human history.

And I think a lot of people enjoy such a level of wealth, especially when you think of it in a historical context, that they don't realize how bad things were before,

how poor people were before.

And it has afforded them a certain kind of luxury.

And the luxury is they don't have to think very hard about what are the institutions required to enable people to create the goods and services that we enjoy.

And so part of that leads to, I think, a sort of zero-sum view of the world.

And a zero-sum view of the world is the idea that is appropriate in some context.

So if the Yankees are playing the Red Sox in baseball, well, one team wins and the other one loses.

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