Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this column included an incorrect date for the Integrity Summit.

It started with a stuffed tiger doll, something so cuddly it would make Hobbes or even Garfield look ferocious.

Today, it’s evolved into a transformative corporate ideal that could restore the middle class if enough people pay attention. Pebbles make ripples and ripples make waves.

“Integrity, to me, is really everything,” said Gregg Ostro, a driving force behind Integrity Summit 13 on Oct. 15 at Chateau Luxe in northwest Phoenix.

It’s a business conference based around a radical concept for anyone schooled on Milton Friedman.

The short version of Friedman’s theory is that businesses don’t have any responsibilities other than profit. Taken to its extreme conclusion, this thinking justifies everything from mass layoffs and low wages to rampant inflation and high prices.

Is it wrong to suggest that widespread acceptance of Friedman economics has encouraged CEOs to boost profits by any means — even at the expense of the American middle class?

Maybe it started with Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times in 1970 that businesses leaders who focus on social responsibilities such as “providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else … are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free........

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