Btw, my father told me when I was young and living in the US (Seattle, actually) that if I would stay in the US for couple of years more, I would become an American.

I believe him. Becoming an American is easy. Becoming a Finn is really hard. My wife has lived in Finland for 18 years and she is an citizen (finally) of the country, but she really doesn't feel as if she would be a Finn and thinks she will never be one.

Yep, you got it.

You have only made 20 comments on this forum and some people are eager to judge/disregard/condemn you from that.

But that leads us back to the fact that not-for-profit companies exist and are not bankrupt. — Isaac

There's no inconsistency. And they are called not-for-profit organizations. As I said before, there's a differnce between .com and .org, just to give one example. Commercial activity usually intends to make profits.

The problem is that some hear dog whistles everywhere.

Although they don't know anything about you, Asif, they have well fixed stereotype for you as you mentioned "Free Speech". Your know in the box of "people who speak of Free Speach".

Just like the weird dedication to a leader of a foreign country, our Canadian. Sign of times too? :snicker:

They will legally cease to exist when they file for bankruptcy. So you might say that is something close to your 2). I assume that surely nowhere is it mandatory for a company to make a profit.

Well said.

Just think of time when Donald Trump as President feels as a far better option than the then current president.

Yes, that can happen in the US. Better to have an inept populist authoritarian than a very capable populist authoritarian.

Well, to have the ability to make investments is very reasonable.

Let's say that most companies intend to make a profit. Those wanting to not make a profit are typically called non-profit organizations. Yes, this is easy.

Business = commercial activity.

What is commercial activity, then you ask? Well, something done to make or done intended to make a profit.

I'm an optimist, DingoJones, the end is not here.

The battlefield should be right here on this forum, but people are still getting only banned for the "normal" reasons. That makes me optimistic. I'm confident that science will prevail. :up:

This doesn't seem to make sense. In the first part you say that a business which doesn't make profits is in trouble. In the second you say there are other business models available if you want to avoid profit. — Isaac

Hint: the other forms are not businesses. They doin't have a business model. Associations don't have business models, they have some agenda or some idea, issue or thing that they promote. It's not called a business. You know, the difference like .com and .org?

Yet they are "legal persons" as corporations and companies and can buy or sell things and own stuff, just like companies.

I'll continue this thread from year ago, while the discourse still continues. Now it's not called decolonization of science but more straightforwardly that science is racist.

In a recent editorial the science journal Cell, or rather the white males at the journal, join the woke movement:

Science has a racism problem. And it is not limited to scientific discoveries and their attendant usage. The scientific establishment, scientific education, and the metrics used to define scientific success have a racism problem as well.

And what is the journal's response? Few highlights:

Representing – we will feature and amplify Black and other underrepresented minority authors of Cell papers on social media. If you are a person of color and you wish to be highlighted in this way, please tell us. Email the editor of your paper with the subject line ‘‘Faces of Cell’’ at any point in the publication process, and we will be honored to post about your paper with your photo and/or your Twitter handle and to re-tweet and amplify your own posts and stories.

We pledge to purposefully highlight Black authors and perspectives in the review and commentary content that we commission and publish and to share these with the greater scientific community.

– we pledge to improve the diversity of our advisory board and our reviewer pool, using our experience with gender equity initiatives to increase representation of non-white scientists, which is far too low.

If there are ways that we can use our voice and our platform to help the Black scientist community, we want to hear them. Please email us if you have concrete ideas for perspectives you want to see or creative ways that you think we can help. We promise to hear them.

See editorial here: Science Has a Racism Problem

And so what does this mean for the new woke Cell journal? Looking at their net pages, the most read articles are: "Tracking Changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G Increases Infectivity of the COVID-19 Virus" and "Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals". The journal puts up articles like: "For Black Scientists, the Sorrow Is Also Personal" and "A Commitment to Gender Diversity in Peer Review". And to be fair, the journal links also to it's "Cell Press Coronavirus Resource Hub".

The interest in Covid-19 is obvious, even making a dent in the woke revolution: when the #ShutDownAcademia had it's "strike" in order to make a point for the George Floyd incident, it was pointed out that researchers doing Covid-19 research would be exempt.

From the above comes to my mind a poster I saw in a psychology congress (my wife was participating in it) by some Iranian psychologist. The science itself seemed to be normal, but the only difference was that here and there was added "if God wills" and "God is most great". Yeah, science isn't dying, only another ladder is added to the bureaucracy and the narrative is adjusted.

Bernie Sanders jumping off a cliff to sacrifice himself for the younger generation or for the Biden/(and woman soon to be picked) Presidential run?

Biden's lead in the poll average has fallen from 10+ to 7,4+. Not an issue, but notice that at lowest the Biden lead has been only 4+.

I personally think that a lot of the most pressing problems in our societies are more about class, about povetry, inequal distribution of wealth and opportunities and the decreasing of social mobility that transforms our society into winners and losers. To argue that it's all because of racism simply doesn't make sense. Those problems are present even here, where 1,34% of the population are poc. (And as the OP stated, racism is quite illogical: today we see German, Poles, Russians as being white and hence similar, but not so was it seen by Germans in the 30's and early 40's.)

The US has an ugly history of racial discrimination which indeed has created a class divide going along racial lines. Even if the legal discrimination has ended many decades ago, it obviously has consequences still. Yet the insistence and fixation just to focus on racism and seeing racists everywhere has just created a new obsession with race and dividing us by race... whatever that division is. It limits us from seeing that the problems aren't only a racial issue, but mainly an issue of class. Modern anti-racism divides us by race and hence upholds the idea of race, which is perplexing.

You haven't actually explained why a corporation must make a profit. — Banno

Isn't it obvious? A business enterprise has to make a profit or at least to cover the costs in order to exist in the long term. A business that covers only it's running costs can make no investments, which can create problems later.

And apart from non-profits, which I mentioned, there are many companies where the intention is not to make a profit, but only to have limited liability of the owners. Housing co-operatives are a case example, as they at least here aren't co-operative but stock companies.

The simple fact is that if you want to have limited liability and not prefer to make a profit, there are then options that I already mentioned open for you: non-profit organizations, an association, foundation even a co-operative. Corporation, or basically a company, isn't the only way.

Der Speigel journo — NOS4A2

You mean Der Spiegel? I lost your thought on this.

Why would one think that there was one common incentive for all of them? They are many and various. — Banno

And those incentives to choose to form a company, a corporation, are things like the limited liability of a corporation, the tax incentives, the ease to coordinate and operate the business. Let's the remember that the other option is simply to buy services without using the contract called a corporation.

No; indeed, that is the point that the counterargument in the article cited above makes. A corporation is free to take on whatever incentives the owners choose; including those that do not lead directly to profit. — Banno

Yet isn't then the issue really about the people, the owners and managers of the corporation, and how they act in the society and what is their role in the society?

It's they who act, not the corporation, which is just an empty shell, a legal contract, without them. Corporations should clearly follow laws and pay taxes, but that doesn't change them from existing to make a profit. This is very crucial here, because it's the people's actions as a part of a society. Far better to argue about the role in society of the ruling class, the owning class, than pinpoint corporations. Because when we don't refer to the people themselves, but only to a corporations, we are arguing that the corporation should duly exist because of other reasons than making profit. So what do we mean by that?

Are corporations non-profit organizations? There is that option too, you know, to form a non-profit. Or the owners can set up a foundation, a charitable trust. Or simply have an association, again a legal entity that can buy and sell, which has limits to how much profits it can do.

The fact is attacking Friedman here is basically is a lousy argument if not even a straw man, because the function that corporations are to make profits still exists. What is Steve Denning actually saying? Here's a quote from the article:

It’s not merely the application of new technology or a set of fixes or adjustments to hierarchical bureaucracy. It involves basic change in the way people think, talk and act in the workplace. It involves deep changes in attitudes, values, habits and beliefs.

The new management paradigm is capable of achieving both continuous innovation and transformation, along with disciplined execution, while also delighting those for whom the work is done and inspiring those doing the work. Organizations implementing it are moving the production frontier of what is possible.

A lot of mushy good sounding biz-words, but is what Denning is saying really refuting that corporations are to make profit? You see, the simple fact of taking into account stakeholders, taking into account environment etc. doesn't simply refute the basics. It's a different question. But seems like depicting the line that economists like Friedman as he said that corporations exist to make profits have nothing else in their mind is the way this issue handled.

Seems like you are referring to two different articles or?

But in any case, some questions for you, Banno:

1) What is the incentive for the owners of a corporation to form a corporation?

2) Do you genuinely think that the incentives in forming a corporation are the ONLY incentives for the owners in their life?

3) What do you mean by the "interest of the corporation"? A corporation is only a legal entity, not a physical entity with it's own interests.

4) Do you have problems in understanding what Steve Denning is saying in his article?

I'm mystified at the suggestion that as Americans, we would somehow "obey" better than self regulate, calculate our own risks and act accordingly. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Hi Tiff!

Oh I was talking about the Finns.

In fact it's very American to believe in self regulation. We Finns on the other hand are a very small country with few people (5+ million, so there's more Arizonians than Finns). Everybody here across party lines understands how truly expendable we are, so we really cherish having our own country and own government and hence take seriously what the government then tells us to do (even if many distrust the EU). For us there really are bigger potential enemies than our own government. People here may think that politicians are inept, but they don't think they are corrupt. They trust the police and the military. Just to prove the point I'll give a telling anecdote: The speed limit in urban areas is 50 km/h. A patrolling police car usually drives slower than this typically at 40 km/h. This creates a problem in Finland: the police car forms a queue behind it of hesitant Finnish drivers who don't dare pass the police car, because they fear that they might get a ticket for speeding. Hence they form a mini traffic jam. (Yes, there are those who do know what the speed limit is and will overtake the police car, but these kind of drivers driving behind the slow police car you genuinely do find.)

Another case example is the Hollywood catastrophe-movies. The ones where the heroic American dad struggles to get his family into safety against all odds fighting his way through hostile neighbors (who act like zombies!) and an insidious ominous government that doesn't care of it's people and on the way reconnects with his wife and gets the respect and admiration of his children. You surely know how the plot goes. If Finns would be depicted in this film, they would be the ones who go and stay inside their homes and listen from the TV or radio what the authorities are saying what they should to do, because, obviously, the authorities know. Americans would call these people sheeple, naive idiots who trust the government and follow it into their own doom.

Yet as you and I are now really living that catastrophe-movie (and there surely will be those movies made about this time for sure!), this difference genuinely shows in real life. Once the leftist-centrist administration (filled with young female women politicians btw.) here decided in agreement with the opposition to introduce a lock down because of covid-19, the public response was different. There really weren't any public discussion of government overreach, of freedoms of the individual being crushed (even if we have a similar constitution) or anybody openly saying that the whole issue was a hoax. The only outcry before the lock down decision was from city and municipality authorities that they wanted decisions and action taken by the central government as it wasn't their job to decide about these issues during a pandemic. And there we find the crux of the difference in culture, in the legal framework, history and why the US is so different from many European countries.

I've suggested plexy glass enclosed podium squares to allow the older professors to safely teach in person. And have also asked the admission for the risk ratio they are using. Is it a certain % of infected students that could shut things down? Tragically the death of a student or a Professor? Other parents and students want to know and they better have a plan. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

And again here you see the difference.

In my job we are (also) pondering how to start again our voluntary courses. Surely we can decide what to do, but above every discussion is the acknowledgement that our own decisions are meaningless if the government, lead by the ruling administration, decides something else. The school semester will start for my 8 and 12 year old children in two weeks, and there's no reason to believe that the two different schools won't apply the same uniform code that basically comes down from the decisions taken by the administration on how to prevent a second surge of the pandemic in the fall. An individual school making up their own rules would likely create contempt and scorn from the parents and questions why the school officials would differ from the government rules. So there are truly differences in culture, I might say.

He can whip up the hostile press while running the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. — NOS4A2

Umm... let's be honest: any Republican President will whup up hostile press. Yet just what this criticism is really makes the difference.

With a more able republican president the criticism would be the usual: that the policies benefit the rich, that it's laissez faire free market oriented and the usual. Not that the president is totally inept at his job: it would be just presumed that US presidents have minimum requirements.

Reagan was laughed at and ridiculed to be just an actor only at the start of his first term.

There a huge discussion here if masks should be obligatory or not. Using a mask is quite rare here. People don't use them.

I think this is it's understandable: the pandemic is quite low now. Nobody has died in a week and the 7 days before only one person died. There are eight people hospitalized in the whole country for covid-19 and none are critical. Daily new confirmed infections are now below ten. For now.

How those numbers compare to the US, multiply them by 66. And here you spot the difference: if there would be 528 people in hospitalized for COVID-19 in all of US and similar amount of infections observed daily in a population of 330 million, not the nearly 300 000 observed now, would there be a huge discussion for making use of masks obligatory in the US?

If the government will make the use of them obligatory (for example in public transports), likely people will obey.

Question: do you imagine Trump rows his own boat? I take it that no one person could be as consistently awful in matters great and small he has been. Call it my version of a belief in "intelligent" design. Somewhere, somehow, some way, there's an account of it all that makes sense of most of it. Trump's personal contribution being the parts that simple don't make sense at all.

Not that he isn't that awful, only that he's not that competently incompetent. — tim wood

Completely incompetent at leadership. Talking to his supporters he is good, but that simply isn't leadership.

The thing is, if you raise the anchor and start the motors of a ship, the ship will surely go somewhere even if nobody is at the helm. It will likely run aground somewhere (if nobody mans the rudder before it happens), but what that somewhere is, who knows.

That's your Trump presidency. The captain can stay at his quarters and tweet with his phone, you know.

Trump can rile up the media and his critics with a single tweet, in this case raising the question about delaying the election. Meanwhile news about the economy falls on deaf ears. — NOS4A2

Yeah, he could also tweet out that he's thinking about a pre-emptive nuclear attack on North Korea.

I promise that would also push aside the bad economic news too.

So Bravo for that thinking! Great way to get media attention.

Anyway, you'll all love the shit show this is going to be in the end of the year.

You don't appear to be addressing the actual critique. Meh. — Banno

If you didn't notice it, the specific question was about what a private corporation/company can do about inflation.

Which amounts to: we don't know what to do, so we should do nothing. — Banno

No. Friedman actually makes the point: If LBJ and Nixon spend a lot in fighting the Vietnam War among other things and thus causing the US dollar to lose value, is it then up for the companies or the wage earners to do something about it? By the way, you are making the flimsy argument which is typically hurled against labor unions to "do their share" in fighting inflation and them being the culprits of inflation, which isn't true.

Please tell us what private companies have to do then. As I said before:

This kind of nonsense is usually directed at the wage earner and the labor unions: to do "their share" in fighting inflation. Perhaps the flimsy argument can be hurled at companies and corporations too. Inflation, just to remind us, is basically a monetary phenomenon resulting of government spending and the printing of money. — ssu

What do you actually imagine is happening when you think about the degeneration of discourse? — fdrake

What is that degeneration of discourse here on PF? That's a good question.

I give an example how I think of it.

From time to time someone asks something about math or logic without good math background about an issue that he or she is obviously interested, but doesn't have much knowledge about the subject. Many times, and I would say luckily, there is someone on the Forum who reads thoroughly the OP, shows what is wrong in the thinking if there is indeed something wrong. And again luckily, this response is better than just "You are wrong, learn math." Naturally as this is the internet, the person doesn't understand that he or she is talking to some assistant professor or masters degree student in math who knows the subject, and will likely get angry and not believe he or she has made any mistake and will strawman something to "win" the debate. But that hardly matters. The main point is that the person has gotten a well thought answer as this community would also point out if the counterargument has holes in the argumentation too. Hence if someone puts out an OP about math or logic and gets replies that don't refute it, I can gather then that person has made some valid point. (Of course if there are zero replies, that tells something...)

Now a topic like politics is surely totally different, yet if someone takes the effort to really show why he or she disagrees with something someone has written, explains just why he or she opposes the view or conclusion, it really isn't futile if the someone doesn't make the other to change their views. The importance is that a counterargument has been made and each member reading the thread can then come to their own conclusions. We won't likely change each others views, but we can show what the issue is about.

So if NOS4A2 believes that Trump doesn't have any links to Russia and that all is a hoax, for someone to give a long dedicated update why it so is in my view worth while. Even if NOS surely won't change his views. But if this site is up in 2030, the thread will surely be interesting to read.

But we don't do that if we just stop the discussion and declare someone a troll or if we stop reading if the person references person X. Not to give the reasoned answer is the way the discourse generates. Then the next stage is "Oh God, it's that fdrake again, nope, I won't even read what he says".

True degeneration of discourse is when there is none.

Your counter appears to be the non sequitur that businessmen should not try to fix the world.

Sure. Start small. — Banno

More like the non sequitur criticism hurled at Friedman/economics: "You mean that economic theory assumes businessmen doing business? What about the greater good for the society and what about the environment??? When you don't have those in the most basic economic model it is disgusting!!! Shame on you."

Re-Tweeted by Trump: — Michael

Re-tweeted by Trump???

Had to check, yeah, it's true.

Quite confused old man, have to say.

or, as Esper says, they are following the boundary east where the new allies are. — NOS4A2

Or perhaps Germany simply is now surrounded by NATO countries, not on the front line as it was during the Cold War.

The predominant use of "us vs them" is to do precisely what you both are doing, declaring yourselves as paragons of courtly reason and measured opinion over and above those plebs like me who only have knee jerk reactions. — fdrake

I'm not accusing you, an administrator here, of having knee jerk reactions or I'm not declaring myself to be a paragon of courtly reason. I think that the admins and the mods do abide by the site rules. And if I have knee jerk reactions, why not make the case that I have here or there a knee jerk response and perhaps I should think it over.

The problem with this being that "both sides" agree with you that there is a "tribal mindset" and a disastrous "us vs them" dynamic, and the entire point of using the "us vs them" group membership signifier is a total subversion of its meaning. — fdrake

That great, then. Such self-criticism is good, because typically people see them as being the reasonable people and others being tribal.

You're both reasoning from on high, lamenting the degeneration of discourse, and if only everyone else agreed with you on how to conduct debate in less than 120 characters the world would be a much better place. — fdrake

?
I genuinely look forward to long thoughtful answers that I can learn something from. I've learnt much from people in this sight, so I do respect them. So I don't get your point.

I think you've got a choice; acknowledge the degeneration of discourse you condemn and work within it - both sides allegedly say "the other side is unreasonable and won't compromise", so that strategy is out of the window. — fdrake

Well I don't believe that "the other side is unreasonable and won't compromise". As you yourself put me in the box of people saying " "both sides have good points, come together!". I genuinely think that a Philosophy Forum can indeed thwart the degeneration of the discourse and even if it's meaningless if just few people discuss things on this small forum, it's at least beneficial to me. I think it's healthy to hear opposing views and if those are well thought, fact based and informative, the better. Yet if that put's me in the paragons of courtly reason -category, well, sorry for not just going with ad hominems and simple answers with emojis that I don't care the shit what somebody says. Not much reason to be here if that is the function of the forum.

Both forms of a principle of sufficient talking which is symptomatic of the degeneration of discourse. I think you're underestimating how complicit and embedded in the discourse you're criticizing you are; to the extent you're making standard moves in it but still believe you're outside of it. — fdrake

Well, I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, so indeed I'm outside being just an annoying commentator.

In other words; you acknowledge the pervasiveness of ideology and how powerful it is, but you simultaneously do not critique it and simply hope that people will be able to overcome it through sufficient talking. That "principle of sufficient talking" is ultimately just ideology too; who're we talking to and what will be done? Talk, just talk. — fdrake

Critique how? Which side should I criticize? If I do them both, Americans will be just confused just where I stand. (That's the basic problem, because the thinking starts from that either you are with us or against us)

And is it just talk talk? Nothing is overcome just by talking but by real actions. Centrist views are viewed as a losing argument that "cave in" to the wrong side. As if people wouldn't have strong opinions. Or as some in another thread one PF member viewed with disgust the idea of consensus. .

What people need is a mental rewind. If they either support the GOP or the Democrats, can they think of policies implemented by the other side that have been good and worked?

Is that reasonable to hypothesize that similar processes take place in the US right now? Maybe it could explain why courthouses have become the targets of systemic attacks. — Number2018

Blacks have been in the US for four hundred years and you have had slavery, so it's a bit different. Sweden hasn't had slavery (even if Swedish ships participated in the slave trade) and it hasn't had colonies in Africa or Asia. Present day non-European minorities are a new thing (Finns as an ethnic minority don't create problems).

I guess the attacks on a court-house means that the legal system is viewed as racist or something.

Absolutely. But you're still thinking about it like a reasonable human being and not an ideologue. — fdrake

Fdrake, for Americans their biggest threat is their antagonistic partisan ideologues dominating every sphere of policy discussion and hence crippling the ability to make any drastic changes.

The simple fact is that policy debate CAN BE REASONABLE between leftist and right wing politicians! If only they don't perceive the policies always to be surrender of their core cause, if they would go along what the other side purposes or would find acceptable.

are you going to think about social policy that removes stressors from (potential) households and provides resource access + stability, or are you condemning single mums for being horribly irresponsible welfare queens with one side of your mouth and railing on sexual degeneracy on the other? It's the latter. — fdrake

American politics goes with the latter as the objective is really to polarize and divide the people. And may I add that the portrayed image about the opposing side is painted using the worst kind of stereotypes imaginable. Just take the most eccentric and ideologically driven comments and depict them to be what the other side is all about.

Basically the whole thing is meant to divide the people, it is meant to be divisive. The objective is to turn you against each other, not to find the obvious common causes that people both on the left and the right would agree on, like that the political system is corrupt and geared for the extremely rich or that the health care system is hideously expensive. Or that excessive use of force by police is a problem and something ought to be done about it.

So let's not talk about those issues. Let's talk about if it's OK or not to topple a statue of George Washington because he was a slave owner. :roll:

They'll look at ssu's graph about poverty and marriage and treat marriage, the individual choice of fidelity and commitment, as the causal factor to be manipulated in solving the problem. — fdrake

I think that many refer also to the economic environment, or with minorities incarceration rates etc. Marriage and getting children is a financial issue also. Few if any refer just to fidelity, commitment or to having the "finish school, get a haircut and get a good job" mentality. The fact is simply that environment has this effect on people: what is common in their surroundings, people will feel is normal.



Rich people are more likely to be married and even if the divorce rates are higher with the more wealthy, it's not the more affluent divorced single parents that are the problem people observe.

So what's the solution? MadWorld1, how would a President like Trump (rather than like Biden) help prevent single parenthood? Require single women to have abortions? Require fathers to marry their child's mother? — Michael

First issue is naturally having an economy where people can get jobs and prosper themselves, that gives also the government that ability to have programs and incentives. Avoiding that huge areas fall into wastelands that have no jobs, few services, meager tax income and hence a poor and not working public sector creates the environment where social problems start to emerge.

Then of course coming from Finland I think that our programs are rather good, personally having enjoyed them as I have two kids. Unlike in the US (I believe) where having maternal or paternal leave depends on the job contract, here it's a law and I think in Sweden they have longer maternal leaves. Paternal leave for the father is 54 days. Programs that help young couples to plan and ease the burden of parenthood I would see as important. And things like a Finnish maternity package is great. Even if you have the money to buy all that stuff, a well thought package of everything helps a lot. The worse issue is if the government programs would incite single parenthood.

Even if there's a cultural / political component to this (which fdrake emphasizes), I would say that good social politics can make a difference and do something to prevent future problems. Unfortunately the discussion typically when we are talking about the US falls into the usual divide to conservative-liberal or GOP/Democrat lines. Emphasizing that fathers do have a role and a responsibility about the upbringing of children as mothers do I think is important. Yet the parents having the ability to give a good childhood to a child is a question more about economic issues than about social norms.

Very typical because it's socially necessary. How's anyone expected to juggle kids and all the other responsibilities they have? Especially when you've gotta do those other responsibilities to take care of the kids. — fdrake

Unfortunately, few families voluntarily can choose that one stays home raises the children. At worst this view is depicted as being against women being in the workforce.

When someone believes the nuclear family is under threat, what threats do you think they're imagining? — fdrake

Basically the correlation between single parenthood and poverty.



I think this above is the main reason. That single moms raising children on their own have it worse shouldn't be any surprise to people.

You agree that having a reliable and large social safety net is a massive benefit for a kid, why stop at the nuclear family? — fdrake

Sure. And in the way you describe it:

Nuclear families don't even stop at the nuclear family; they depend on nurseries and elderly relatives. — fdrake

Kindergartens, schools, grandparents and the extended family is of course very typical. And in many parts of the World where there aren't other social safety nets the only thing people can rely is to a far more extended family than just the nuclear family. Social relations differ as for example in Latin American countries the extended family is more important than in let's say the Nordic countries.

To me those that emphasize the nuclear family make the point mainly reasoning that single parenthood is bad as you agreed. I neither think that the proponents of the nuclear families are against the extended families either, likely they just admit that the extended family has broken up.

Yes, there are other groups who view the issue from a religious point of view and those conservatives that simply oppose alternative families. Of course then being against alternative families is a bit different: just saying that nuclear families are important doesn't mean that you are against alternative families.

If Friedman is talking about the corporations role or social responsibility of countering inflation, that indeed is questionable.

Do you really think that curbing inflation is the role of a private corporation? This kind of nonsense is usually directed at the wage earner and the labor unions: to do "their share" in fighting inflation. Perhaps the flimsy argument can be hurled at companies and corporations too. Inflation, just to remind us, is basically a monetary phenomenon resulting of government spending and the printing of money.

So if you argue that Friedman is wrong here, just what is your reasoning that private companies have to fight inflation caused by the expansion of the money supply? It's as dumb as to say that the baker shouldn't raise his or her prices because the cost of flour has gone up because the currency has lost it's value. But let's blame the baker, not the actual culprit.

And do notice that the article has been written in 1970, hence in an era when we had traditional inflation and the US was still clinging on to the gold standard on an unreasonably high value (which would be soon called out).

If this is a true report, and since the protest in Portland is going on for 60 days, most likely that it has
a kind of a clear cause, differently from what ssu thinks. — Number2018

That wasn't my intention to say, so sorry if I made myself unclear.

In this case there obviously is a clear case, the case of George Floyd and also movements like the BLM behind it. However it's obvious that if this is the reason for the protests, there are obviously many with different agendas involved. The example of Sweden was a different example, but I gave it to show that clashes with the authorities can emerge and continue for various reasons...or even without them, once they get going.

Examples like both parents usually have to work are not arguments against the nuclear family in my view. Usually the argument is made for the nuclear family because we have seen the problems that rise from widespread single parenting (usually by the mother). Of course you can be against the idea that it's good for children to have both a father and a mother. I still view that having a family as a social net where people take care of each other is a good thing.

I think Friedman was very well informed about there being a public sector.

For him the important role of the government was the following:

in a free private enterprise exchange economy, government’s primary role is to preserve the rules of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, and keeping markets free.

Enforcing contracts and preventing coercion is basically what the legal system provides. And Friedman acknowledge the obvious roles, starting from the defence sector:

However, there are some items where it is not feasible for everybody to do his own thing.
There are some cases in which you must have uniformity, some cases in which the answer
must be the same for all the people. The most obvious example is in the case of national
defense. There is no way in which some people in a country can be engaged in an
international war and other people in a country can be not engaged in that war. The decision
whether the country is at war is a yes or no decision that must be the same answer for all.

(Milton Friedman)

And of course he understood other roles of the public sector too.

Education is today largely paid for and almost entirely administered by governmental bodies or non-profit institutions. This situation has developed gradually and is now taken so much for granted that little explicit attention is any longer directed to the reasons for the special treatment of education even in countries that are predominantly free enterprise in organization and philosophy.

But coming to the article you posted, one part is a bit confusing when speaking of Friedmans article:

What’s interesting is that while the article jettisons one legal reality—the corporation—as a mere legal fiction, it rests its entire argument on another legal reality—the law of agency—as the foundation for the conclusions. The article thus picks and chooses which parts of legal reality are mere “legal fictions” to be ignored and which parts are “rock-solid foundations” for public policy. The choice depends on the predetermined conclusion that is sought to be proved.

A corporate exec­utive who devotes any money for any general social interest would, the article argues, “be spending someone else's money… Insofar as his actions in accord with his ‘social responsi­bility’ reduce returns to stockholders, he is spending their money.”

How did the corporation’s money somehow become the shareholder’s money? Simple. That is the article’s starting assumption. By assuming away the existence of the corporation as a mere “legal fiction”, hey presto! the corporation’s money magically becomes the stockholders' money.

This is a bit strange. A corporation is indeed just a complex legal contract and only a vessel for the owners in their business endeavor. Owners do own the company. This assumption isn't only with Friedman, it's basic economic theory of a company, not as the writer terms "legal fiction". Economic theory starts from basics and these are the basics (that companies and corporations are contracts) and only after comes a different question, what is the role of markets, market transactions and companies to the good of the society in general. It is simply erroneous to assume a larger importance to the simple fact that a company is a contract, and then make the argument that well, the thinking doesn't take into consideration stakeholders, the society or the environment. That simplified part of a theory doesn't answer to those issues. It's just a poor argument for promoting stakeholder value.

It is difficult to find out what is actually going on in Portland right now. What is your view?
As far as I see, there are two major narratives in the media: peaceful protesters vs. rioters; both are completely incompatible. — Number2018

I wonder why it is so difficult to report that there are a) peaceful protesters, those especially during the day who do follow curfews etc. b) protesters that will get agitated c) provocateurs who do love a riot, prepare and train for the event d) looters, who will use the opportunity to loot when the police isn't stopping them because, why not? Protests and demonstrations are made of various people with different agendas if they are of any larger size. Especially if the groups c) or d) are allowed to operate, they surely will do that. And there has to be only a tiny group. Yet I'm not seeing helicopter footage of Portland or Seattle burning, so I do believe it really is concentrated on limited areas with in the end not many people involved.

The same could be said about the protests themselves. First there is the cause of police brutality and killing of George Floyd itself. The there is the "official" Black Lives Matter movement which has it's own peculiar agenda. I don't think it ends just there: when you have a botched pandemic response in the US which has caused massive unemployment, there are other reasons for people to be unhappy and if one way is to go and participate in a protest, there's your answer.

But note that rioting doesn't even have to have a clear dedicated cause. Once when young people get the habit of confronting the police and they have nothing to do, riots can erupt. I remember in Sweden few years ago the media was totally clueless why there were youth riots with absolutely no movement behind it. In the end, they just died down. Sociologists had a lot of explaining to do.

Yet unlike says, for example the above coverage really doesn't look like a war zone. Actual war zones are empty of people. War zones look like the following. Notice the huge difference to coverage from US cities: