When it was first published in The New York Times in 1970, Milton Friedman's "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits" heralded a new way of thinking about the mission of a company and helped to shift Corporate America from a stakeholder vision of capitalism to one that gave shareholders pride of place. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert looks at some of the central claims of Friedman's essay and situates it against the backdrop of the Cold War and fears about creeping socialism. He also explores how relevant Friedman's famous arguments are to a world where Mikhail Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall are now a distant memory.

Today, when we think of craft-based products, we tend to think of high end goods: Ferraris, Ferragamo shoes, and fine wines. But are the crafts merely reserved for the super wealthy, and what can we learn from the spirit of craftsmanship in a modern mechanized world? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up the modern legacy of craftsmanship as embodied in Oxxford clothes, a century-old Chicago based maker of high end, handmade men's garments. He also explores how craftsmanship has often been seen as an antidote to the unseemly elements of cheap goods and mechanized labor.

You don't need to be a card carrying communist to appreciate the familiar tension between employees and management, but what happens when your boss is an app? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores the ways in which Uber has tried to perfect the art of app based management. He catalogues the ways in which the company nudges and controls its drivers and discusses how their efforts portend a world where management techniques will increasingly be automated.

Money can buy you a lot of nice things, but what about when its power goes beyond the ability to purchase a penthouse or a Porsche? When money allows us to buy non-material goods – such as status, power, or personal advancement – how does it change the way we look at ourselves and how we decide to spend our days? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert draws on a wide array of economists and philosophers to explore what it means to live in a world where money can seemingly buy everything. He considers not only how this changes our understanding of non-material goods, like honor and self-esteem, but also how it shapes the stories we tell ourselves about what really constitutes our self-interest.

Trust is crucial in commercial transactions. We want to know if the people we do business with are reliable, but if we don't know them personally, how can we be so sure that we should trust the individual on the other side of the negotiating table or the shop counter? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up questions of trust in business, a matter he became attuned to after a very unpleasant trip to the dentist. He shares his story and takes an historic look at how early proponents of capitalism dealt with questions of trust. He also examines whether Yelp and other social media services have helped to solve the problem of "buyer beware" in business.  

When it comes to marketing, negotiations, and salesmanship, companies seem to tolerate a lot of what we might call "little white lies." Does such permissiveness say something essential about business, or does it say more about the type of people who typically conduct it? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up the role of lying in business. He considers a classic essay on the matter from the Harvard Business Review, and explores whether there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between a little truth bending and a lot of fraud.  

As children, the way our parents look at us often gives us the impression that we are the most important person in the world. Yet as we grow older, we often find that we've gone from being the center of the universe to a tiny cog in a corporate machine. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up why we often feel that companies don't care about us. As he explains, it's not personal, rather, they simply can't afford to.

There is a group of young men online who spend a lot of time talking about what they call "productivity hacks." They are obsessed with how to make their days more productive, but their advice seems more consistent making a promising individual more like a robot than a fully formed human being. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores this productivity fad and ties it to a longer tale about the connection between Christian beliefs about work and the rise of capitalism in the West. He shows us how we became so devoted to utility – and stayed so devoted – even as religious imperatives receded from public life and we forgot the reason why we cared so much in the first place.  

Being at the head of the class has many benefits, but we all know that academic success isn't a one way ticket to the C-Suite. What the classroom rewards and what professional success requires are not one and the same thing – a lesson that some Valedictorians among us seem to learn the hard way. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert reflects on what Valedictorian-types should think about as they transition to the real world if they hope to achieve the same elite level of success in their professional lives as they did on standardized tests. 

Unless you're a sociopath, it's normal to feel like there are some duties you owe others and to the world around you. We feel compelled to clean up after ourselves when we make a mess or to check in Mom when she isn't feeling well. But when we think about the full scope of the duties that might oblige us – should we do something about climate change or global poverty? – we can quickly find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores how we should think about our duties to others and how we can manage the trade-offs among our moral priorities. He also investigates how we can strike a balance between being a good person and a sane one, as well.