Followers of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics often claim that business has no other duty than profits to shareholders, and that business therefore has a duty not to pursue environmental and social sustainability except where it increases profits. The extent to which such actions are profitable is much disputed. On the other hand, Friedman actually did not say that the duty to shareholders was absolute: corporations also had a duty to obey the law and compete fairly. Friedman's criticism has been debunked by legal scholars (e.g., Stout 2002), who have shown that Friedman had no legal basis for his conclusion. Corporate executives do not legally need to run the corporation for shareholders and could, in fact, operate the corporation to benefit society and environment. The fact that Friedman misunderstood corporate governance is no surprise as it was not his area of expertise, and the fact that the NYT Magazine allowed the mistake is not a surprise as it is not a double blind peer reviewed academic journal.