Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 13th, 1970, an op-ed appears in the New York Times entitled

A Friedman Doctrine, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits.

This was written by economist Milton Friedman who business is to increase its profits.

This was written by economist Milton Friedman,

whose name you probably know.

Let's call him the father of modern American capitalism

in many ways.

We'll get into that.

But in this op-ed, he was responding to activist investors who were

putting pressure on companies to incorporate social responsibility into their

business and Friedman pushes back and makes the case for what comes to be known as shareholder theory, which

argued that the main task of a business was to make money for its shareholders.

So this is a big idea, a big inflection point in the economic values that undergird our entire system and our entire country.

Luckily there is a big new series that tries to tackle this topic.

It is from the Vox Podcast today explained it is called Blame capitalism

and it's coming out every Friday in the today explained feed the first

episodes out now episodes are coming out every Friday and our special guest is the

host of that series and

the co-host and editorial director of Today explained Noel King who formerly

hosted Morning editions that I'm reporting for Up First and Planet Monday

...