A much different argument is that business executives and managers have few, if any, ethical obligations to anyone other than their owners. Therefore “business ethics” is a lot of mumbo-jumbo, imposing inappropriate standards on businesses. The best-known exponent of this view is Milton Friedman, the conservative economist who is widely recognized for arguing that business have essentially no obligations other than to maximize profit for their owners or shareholders. Friedman has argued that the only ethical responsibility of the corporate executive is to the company’s owners. That responsibility is to “make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.