The Era of the Business Idiot

Milton Friedman, Markets, and Morality

• Large subthread debates whether the article misrepresents Friedman and his shareholder‑value doctrine.
• One side: Friedman emphasized following laws and norms, opposed monopoly power, and argued that managers shouldn’t spend others’ money on personal social goals; regulation should target clear harms (e.g., pollution).
• Critics: In practice his framework licenses exploitation and discrimination, assuming markets will self‑correct in a chaotic world. They argue he underestimated how long harmful preferences (e.g., racism) can persist and how much harm they cause.
• Heated debate centers on a passage about a racist community refusing Black clerks. Defenders say the quote is cherry‑picked and Friedman explicitly condemned racial prejudice, arguing only against state coercion. Opponents say that functionally he defends owners’ “freedom” to discriminate and opposes the only tools that reliably reduce it (civil‑rights laws, minimum wage, etc.).
• Broader disagreement: Should government aggressively regulate “negative harms” (discrimination, low wages), or does that become a dangerous, overreaching “stick”?

Discrimination, Segregation, and Role of Government

• Some argue segregation was primarily state‑imposed and that free markets historically encouraged integration when allowed.
• Others counter with examples like redlining, restrictive covenants, and racist violence, saying markets often entrenched segregation and that legal force was necessary to break it.
• There’s acknowledgment that preferences have changed over time, but dispute over whether that’s due to markets alone or to government intervention forcing integration.

What Counts as Executive Competence

• Several commenters reinterpret the piece’s “symbolic executive” idea: executives still primarily optimize one metric—“number go up”—but the link between that and “being good at stuff” (real productive value) has frayed.
• Some think entrenched positions, zero‑rate environments, and hype explain success more than genuine capability.
• Others note investors tolerate prolonged unprofitability if they believe in future dominance, so “value to society” is mostly rhetorical cover.

AI Tools, Communication, and Corporate Theater

• The article’s dismissal of email summaries, AI meeting prep, and “chatting with podcasts” draws pushback.
• Defenders say most corporate communication is poorly written and performative; AI that summarizes or adapts content to context, language, or style can be a real efficiency gain, not just an idiot’s crutch.
• There’s related frustration at managerial cultures that reward appearances, nitpicking, and “vibes” over substantive work.

Measurement, Incentives, and Broader System Failures

• Multiple comments stress that the real problem is incentive design: once success is reduced to a single financial metric, executives, investors, and VCs rationally chase it, even when it harms social “flourishing.”
• Venture structure, index investing, and monetary policy are cited as amplifiers of short‑termism, not just Friedman’s ideas alone.

Reactions to the Article and Author

• Some find the piece valuable for tracing business clichés back to dubious origins; others call it a slog, error‑prone, or rage‑bait that clips sources out of context.
• A subset dismisses it as unfocused complaining about “business idiots” and AI, while others see it as accurately capturing a hollow, performative executive culture.