Analysis of Issue
The desire of corporations to maximize profits creates conflict with the general welfare of the nation at large.

Discuss the extent to............. etc.

My essay:
The author mentions that the desire of corporations to maximize profits creates conflicts with the general welfare of the nation at large. The corporation as a single entity tries to grow while competing with the other entities and sometimes leads to results detrimental to the society. In this discussion, I shall present arguments favoring the statement given as issue topic.

A corporation, although well organised in itself, has its own objectives including the maximization of profit as a major objective. With the target to achieve higher profits, the corporation thinks everybody else as either a consumer or a competitor. For example, McDonalds is very large food chain across the world. It always try to make the food more tasty but by making the food more junk, which is not good for health. As a growing organisation, it tries to analyse the demand of junk food in the untapped area and expands its business in that area. As a organisation, it leads to higher revenues but junk food itself is detrimental to health of the national population.

In many industries like hedge funds, the management gives revenue targets to the employees and decides the employees' remuneration based on the targets achieved. Therefore, in the keenness to earn higher remuneration, they always try to increase the revenue of the company and neglect the impact of their actions to the society. For example, in the recent economic crises led by mortgage defaults, the traders in hedge funds had taken huge market risks as well as credit risks with desire to earn higher returns. But this excessive risk taking resulted in huge losses, which not only organisation had to bear but also the government had to bail out for them. The same was seen in the case of Long Term Capital Gain, which was bailed out by the financial giants of United States and other countries, when its losses had reached to the level where whole banking system was put at risk.

In sum, the excessive desire to earn more profits by the organisation, many times, creates damage to the national interest. Therefore, the same needs to be checked on the moral ground by imposing business ethics as well as moral ethics on the corporations. The organisation growth should be measured not only in terms of profits but also the benefits, the organisation gives to the society.