IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Businesses should do anything they can to make a profit.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer:
Subscribing the idea that business people’s ultimate objective is to make the world better, how is this best accomplished? The most familiar view is that it is achieved through making money as much as possible. The best thing a business person can do is to be a good business person, which is to say, to maximize the company’s profit. He, therefore, stick to marketing, finance, and managerial functions rather than waste time with ethics.
The proponents of business freedom argue that business has no obligation to support such social issues as hiring hard-core unemployed to mitigate poverty, or reducing pollution beyond that mandated by law. A business’s sole task is to maximize its profit, subject to the limits of law and rules of game that ensure open and free competition without deception or fraud. If it contributes money to arts or community development, it has to be with an eye of increasing profit, perhaps by improving brand image.
It would be so nice if the world were simpler. For example, what happens, when laws permit the anti-social behavior? Let me elaborate it a bit more. Suppose a hurricane hits the town and separates it from the outside world. There is a dire need for portable electric generators, and the only local seller takes the opportunity to charge in an exorbitant price. Since law permits this sort of price gouging, the store manager has no right to tax the owners by charging less when the market can bear the costs; we can take an example when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida to support this notion. The businessmen, in a business freedom’s view, should have the right to ask the buyer to pay more, since the buying decision is voluntary in the free market.
This little example masks off the fallacy of the so-called freedom. How could business make a better world exploiting the hurricane victims by demanding a high price? Is it permissible for business to exploit victims of a disaster? Are there no liabilities or sympathies to the victims? Of course not! The business cannot escape obligation for the sake of profit maximization. If the society does not survive, whom business sales its products or services to? So, business indeed has some ethical obligation towards society.
To reiterate, business is not only the subject to law, but equally to the ethics. Although, it is often a faint matter that how far social obligation extends, it should have some sorts of ethical practices if business’ objective is to build a better world to live.