#70 Concentrated Costs, Diffused Benefits 🎧

<p><em>This newsletter is really a weekly public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></p><p><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration courtesy the good folks at </em><em>Ad-Auris</em><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em></p><p><strong>India Policy Watch #1: 50 Years Of That Friedman NYT Article</strong></p><p><em>Insights on burning policy issues in India</em></p><p>— RSJ</p><p>On September 13, 1970, Milton Friedman wrote his <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html">famous piece on the social responsibility of business</a> in <em>The New York Times</em>. The clarity of Friedman’s thinking and his powerful articulation of the doctrine of shareholder value maximisation has made it, arguably, the most influential business article of all time. </p><p>Friedman scoffs at businesses talking of ‘social responsibility’ suggesting any attempt to do so will turn political that will force the individual to conform to the more general social interest. Who determines this social interest? In the hands of a dictator or a demagogue, this decision can be detrimental to society. </p><p>It is a compelling article. I would suggest you read it before you dismiss it as free-market fundamentalism. Friedman concludes:</p><p>“But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained witho