While I am undoubtedly on the center-left of the American political spectrum, I agree for the most part with Milton Friedman’s position that corporations should be in the business of making money–period. My rationale is that running a successful business is a difficult proposition, and requires a different skill set than making and implementing public policy. Politics is about balancing interests; imposing that approach on business typically results in confusion and failure. That’s why nationalization rarely works.
That said, Friedman wrote at a time when business interests held little sway in Washington. You don’t have to be Sanders or Warren to see that conditions are very different today. Regulatory capture is a serious problem whenever the GOP is in power, and Republicans have pursued the same anti-tax and anti-regulatory agenda for the last 40 years in spite of drastic changes in circumstances.
So how does one reconcile Friedman’s concept with current conditions? By voting out Republicans and thereby limiting the influence of business on the making of policy, of course.