The Week USA - 30.08.2019

ARTS

22 Books

The anthropologists who

showed us the many

ways to be human

23 Author of the week

A deaf-blind high achiever

who doesn’t want to be

called inspiring

24 Art & Music

Bill Viola’s

immersive video

art

25 Film & Stage

Game night

with the in-laws

turns deadly in

Ready or Not

NEWS

4 Main stories

The economy’s recession

warning signals; a weaker

Endangered Species Act;

Planned Parenthood loses

federal funding

6 Controversy of the week

Was Israel right to deny

entry to two Democratic

congresswomen?

7 The U.S. at a glance

Potential mass shooters

foiled; Trump retreats on

gun-control reform

8 The world at a glance

Iceland mourns a melted

glacier; a suicide bomber

slaughters dozens at an

Afghan wedding

10 People

Taylor Swift won’t be

canceled; the basketball

star who became a nun

11 Briefi ng

The fi rst enslaved people

arrived in the U.S.

400 years ago. How

did slavery shape the

country?

12 Best U.S. columns

Climate change heats up

the U.S.; when deportation

is a death sentence

14 Best European columns

France struggles with its

Napoleonic history

16 Talking points

The 50th anniversary of

Woodstock; America turns

away the “wretched”;

Trump eyes Greenland

LEISURE

27 Food & Drink

Three fi ne Korean dining

restaurants in the U.S.

28 Travel

Exploring rural France in a

vintage Citroën 2CV

29 Consumer

The all-analog 2020 Lotus

Evora GT sports car

BUSINESS

32 News at a glance

Top CEOs rethink putting

shareholders fi rst; states

plan a Big Tech probe

33 Making money

How to protect yourself

against identity theft

34 Best columns

WeWork’s controversial

IPO; how China is winning

the trade war

Denmark’s Prime Minister Frederiksen: ‘Greenland is not for sale.’ (p. 17)

Taylor Swift
(p.10)
Getty (2)

Pure heresy. Treason! How else can one describe this week’s revo-

lutionary revision of “the purpose of a corporation” by the Busi-

ness Roundtable, a group of 188 CEOs of America’s most pow-

erful companies. For 40 years, the corporate world has reverently

knelt before libertarian economist Milton Friedman and his famed

doctrine: “There is one and only one social responsibility of busi-

ness,” Friedman said, and that is to “engage in activities designed

to increase its profits.” CEOs worked for stockholders, and no one

else. But in a fractious political climate in which populists from

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to presidential candidate Elizabeth

Warren are questioning how well capitalism is serving Americans,

nervous CEOs are having second thoughts. Corporate leaders, they

say, should manage their businesses to benefit “all stakeholders”—

employees, customers, and society itself. (See Business News.) In

his heyday, the highly influential Friedman dismissed such do-good

sentiments as “pure and unadulterated socialism.”

Whether or not the CEOs follow through on their pre- emptive

nod to social responsibility, capitalism is clearly headed for a

reckoning. Indisputably, free markets can be wondrous genera-

tors of wealth and progress, and have dramatically raised the liv-

ing standards of billions of human beings. But real-world experi-

ence has undermined free marketeers’ near-theological belief that

the unfettered pursuit of self-interest invariably produces the best

outcomes for society itself. Banks’ reckless pursuit of profits trig-

gered the landslide of the 2008 financial crisis. Big Pharma made

billions by creating an opioid epidemic that has ruined millions of

lives. Fossil-fuel consumption is altering the planet’s climate. The

tech industry has seduced us all into surrendering terabytes of in-

formation that it sells at enormous profit. Executives cut them-

selves an ever-growing slice of the economic pie, while middle-

class workers get crumbs. As they say on Wall

Street, a correction may be coming.

Editor’s letter

Contents 3

William Falk

Editor-in-chief

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