A story in Tuesday’s Washington Times about the NAACP’s effort to
target private companies for reparations led the Foundation for
Economic Education’s website to feature a 1998 column by John Hood as
its “Timely Classic” companion to the story and the theme of
social responsibility. Hood wrote it is
important to realize that the effort to make a profit is itself
socially responsible. “Companies, then, bring a search for efficiency
and economy to the task of solving problems. This search represents a
fundamentally different way of addressing social problems from the
means employed by governments, charities, churches, or families. To
erase the distinctions between corporations and other institutions is
potentially to lose the unique problem-solving opportunities that free
enterprise creates.”