Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing Highlight

Milton Friedman, the Reaganites’ favorite economist, argued what was then still the contrarian viewpoint in the New York Times Magazine in 1970: “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Fifty years later, communities are fragile, workers insecure, and families stressed. It isn’t hard to see the connection to a half century’s embrace of narrow corporate self-interest over collective responsibility. The federal government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis was only the most visible sign of decay in American institutions—the effects are felt in virtually every aspect of life, from soaring health-care costs to skyrocketing inequality to wildfire smoke blanketing American cities for weeks on end because of escalating carbon…