Video clip of the day

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Back in October of 2009 we went to a buy-cott of Whole Foods to support its CEO John Mackey, a "soft-core" libertarian, who had horrified his Prius and Volvo-driving patrons because of his opposition to ObamaCare.

Matt Welch of Reason.com sat down with Mackey at FreedomFest 2012 for a chat.

(video about 6-1/2 minutes long)





0:30 : Welch: (Liberals can be awfully illiberal when it comes to other people's choices.)

0:50 : Mackey: "Some people aren't happy unless they're telling other people what to do."


2:25 : Mackey: "You have to understand the narrative that many people have about capitalism and corporations that they are fundamentally selfish and greedy and exploitative, that corporations are sociopaths, that they don't care about anything or anyone but themselves and want to make as much money as possible... that they are fundamentally evil."

3:35 : Mackey: "Business is the greatest value-creator in the world."



Mackey, who is pimping a new book, returns to the narrative that we latched onto at the link above; that champions of capitalism and free enterprise have done a horrible job of making their case against statism and collectivism.

Mackey explains that defending rational self-interest and the profit motive has to be balanced against making the case for how capitalism generates what we will call "best value", not for just the owner who reaps the profits but for the employees, the customers and for society at large as well.



Here is what we wrote 3 years ago after attending the buy-cott:

One of his criticisms of the freedom movement is that he believes it to be overly-provocative and he goes all the way back to Ayn Rand’s seminal Atlas Shrugged for deliberately conflating selfishness and self-interest and fast forwards to the 80s movie Wall Street and Gordon Gekko’s famous line, “Greed is Good”. He believes the freedom movement has allowed themselves to be painted into a corner as evil corporatists because of Rand’s original sin which was manifested in popular culture by Oliver Stone’s movie (Wall Street) 30 years later.

And here is what Mackey said at a FreedomFest from a few years back:

I believe that business has a much greater purpose. Business, working through free markets, is possibly the greatest force for good on the planet today. When executed well, business increases prosperity, ends poverty, improves the quality of life, and promotes the health and longevity of the world population at an unprecedented rate. This audience understands these truths, but how many people in our greater society comprehend it? The freedom movement has also poorly defended the social legitimacy of both business and free markets. A new paradigm for business and the free market is necessary — one that accepts the importance of profits, of course, but also one that recognizes that business has legitimate social responsibilities that go far beyond merely maximizing profits.

We might try to pick up Mackey's book (we admit to being at a loss for the title of said publication) because we have been coming around to his thoughts on re-structuring the narrative and, yes, (sigh) working on the messaging.

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Spotting Ayn Rand in the produce section

Took us a little while to get to it but we wanted to share some thoughts on the Whole Foods Buy-cott on Saturday. (Roundup of the event can also be found at Temple of Mut, W.C. Varones Blog and The Liberator Today)

A good time was had by all as the right-wing mob descended upon the Whole Foods in La Jolla to bond, shop, eat and make a general nuisance of ourselves. Ostensibly, the buy-cott was to show support for the libertarian CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. Show support for a fat cat? You bet, because this fat cat has had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the established status quo of healthcare reform and aggressively argue for free market reforms of healthcare much to the chagrin of many of his urban liberal patrons who have attempted to organize boycotts of his chain (incidentally, there were a handful of boycotters outside and from the looks of things inside their efforts were failing… miserably).

Anyway, one of the most interesting things of the day was the text of a speech Mackey gave at FreedomFest in Las Vegas a few years back and which was circulating around the assembled congregation of mob-goers. It’s a fascinating read and can be found here. It is an unvarnished critique of what he describes as the “freedom movement”. He doesn’t take time to define what this movement is but in reading his speech we take it to mean a coalition of libertarian and small-government Conservatives plus anyone else opposed to statism and general collectivist government policies, so we can assume we are squarely in Mackey’s self-described camp.

One of his criticisms of the freedom movement is that he believes it to be overly-provocative and he goes all the way back to Ayn Rand’s seminal Atlas Shrugged for deliberately conflating selfishness and self-interest and fast forwards to the 80s movie Wall Street and Gordon Gekko’s famous line, “Greed is Good”. He believes the freedom movement has allowed themselves to be painted into a corner as evil corporatists because of Rand’s original sin which was manifested in popular culture by Oliver Stone’s movie 30 years later.

We have used Gekko’s term on several occasions on these pages, with relish. When we have used it, we hope that we have left a clear signal that our tongue is somewhat in cheek because our use of the term is more a reaction to the general disdain the liberal-Left has for anything worthwhile resulting from the “profit motive” rather than an actual belief in the “virtue of selfishness” that Rand believed. We understand Mackey’s point though we aren’t dropping usage of the phrase solely because it’s so fun to say and it just totally cheeses-off the right people.

Here’s Mackey’s paragraph on profits, greed and the nature of businesses:

I believe that business has a much greater purpose. Business, working through free markets, is possibly the greatest force for good on the planet today. When executed well, business increases prosperity, ends poverty, improves the quality of life, and promotes the health and longevity of the world population at an unprecedented rate. This audience understands these truths, but how many people in our greater society comprehend it? The freedom movement has also poorly defended the social legitimacy of both business and free markets. A new paradigm for business and the free market is necessary — one that accepts the importance of profits, of course, but also one that recognizes that business has legitimate social responsibilities that go far beyond merely maximizing profits.

We’re running a little long so we’ll break things off here at the most awkward of points but we encourage you to read the entirety of Mackey’s piece. Later in the speech he talks about the fights that the freedom movement has mistakenly picked and how they have been hurt by it. We may have some thoughts on that at a later time.

Just say "no" to Che'

Reason.tv and their horrible set designs and even more-horrible wardrobes are back talking about the appeal (or lack thereof) of libertarianism and its future both here in California and the nation.

Here, Tim Kavanaugh talks to some dude named Starchild.



During the run-up to the '08 Presidential election, we recall the liberal-Left attempting to fashion some sort of fusionism of their own with libertarians. Obviously, this didn't pan out. As with Bill Maher attempting to rationalize being a "libertarian" while voting for Ralph Nader back in 2000, the nanny state kids desperately want to look cool and to be able to hang with the rockers in the slicked-back hair and leather jackets. Life just doesn't work that way.

But Kavanaugh does ask Starboy, "Why does the Left constantly provide less welcoming ground than the right?"

'child blames Ayn Rand's fascination with big business and her brand of scorched earth individualism for not providing the rounded edges that might be appealing to liberals.

Not sure that is going to work either. John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods, is a "soft-core libertarian" and after a buy-cott of the Whole Foods in LaJolla in October of '09 to support Mackey's rejection of ObamaCare here is what we wrote:

One of his criticisms of the freedom movement is that he believes it to be overly-provocative and he goes all the way back to Ayn Rand’s seminal Atlas Shrugged for deliberately conflating selfishness and self-interest and fast forwards to the 80s movie Wall Street and Gordon Gekko’s famous line, “Greed is Good”. He believes the freedom movement has allowed themselves to be painted into a corner as evil corporatists because of Rand’s original sin which was manifested in popular culture by Oliver Stone’s movie 30 years later.

We have used Gekko’s term on several occasions on these pages with relish. When we have used it, we hope that we have left a clear signal that our tongue is somewhat in cheek because our use of the term is more a reaction to the general disdain the liberal-Left has for anything worthwhile resulting from the “profit motive” rather than an actual belief in the “virtue of selfishness” that Rand believed. We understand Mackey’s point, though we aren’t dropping usage of the phrase solely because it’s so fun to say and it just totally cheeses-off the right people.

We linked to a paper written by Mackey where there is some touchy-feely sentiments that might appeal to libs but at his core, Mackey is a small government, free-market capitalist... who opposes ObamaCare. There are only so many gaps that can be bridged.

Reformed libertarian, B-Daddy had his thoughts on the matter, here.

While Starchild believes the libertarian movement could benefit from their own Che' Guevara (please, no), we'd simply start with libertarians not acting like the humourless and pretentious political snobs we find many of them to be.

Getting bogged down in semantics

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Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, who has been an outspoken critic of ObamaCare, found himself in the news again this week for an updated critique of the Affordable Care Act:

(previous posts regarding Mackey and his completely principled opposition to ObamaCare can be found here)

The CEO of Whole Foods compared President Obama's health care law to "fascism" in a radio interview on Wednesday, a turnabout from earlier comments in which he compared the signature reforms to socialism.

"Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," John Mackey told NPR's Morning Edition. "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it — and that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms."

The Wall Street Journal in 2009 ran a piece by Mr. Mackey that was critical of Mr. Obama's law, which passed in March 2010 and is marching toward full implementation in the coming years. The article led with a quote from Margaret Thatcher, who said, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Mr. Mackey is probably correct in this nuanced shift in terminology for what we know of Obamacare, currently, however: Socialism, Fascism... how do we really know what it is if no one, not the health insurance industry lobbyists that wrote it, not the members of Congress who did not read it yet voted on it and not even the President who also did not read it but signed it into law can tell you what this monstrosity is going to look like, say, 5 to 10 years from now?

It's almost as if those two terms have been drummed into irrelevance over the years due to misuse and overuse.

The good news, however, for champions of the President's healthcare law is that come 5 or 10 years down the line, we're predicting a renewed debate of these two terms with their respective corresponding surge in relevancy.

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Programming Alert

So what are you doing Saturday? You’re going shopping, that’s what. And you are going shopping at Whole Foods… the Whole Foods in La Jolla, California to be exact.

The San Diego Tea Party chapter is organizing a Buy-cott of Whole Foods as a show of support for John Mackey its CEO and his editorial in the Wall Street Journal that called for free market reforms of the healthcare system.

B-Daddy has been quite unrepentant in his bro-mance with Mackey which he covers here but the summary of Mackey’s pitch is as such:

1. "Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts."
2. "Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits."
3. Allow competition across state lines.
4. "Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover."
5. "Enact tort reform."
6. "Make costs transparent."
7. "Enact medicare reform."
8. Revise tax law to make it easier to donate to those without insurance.

It’s like so full of common sense that of course it drove the urban limo libs to call for boycotts of Mackey’s stores.

Well, here’s a chance to stand up for a man who has been taking a much undeserved smacking around. Please join us and the rest of the unwashed but well-read as we converge on the LaJolla Whole Foods market at 11, Saturday, Oct. 10.

Oh, and there will be a blogging tutorial held concurrently at the WiFi-equipped café inside for you basement-dwelling, pajama-wearing fools or those who wish to become one.

Programming Reminder

Remember folks, Saturday is the day you're loading the crumb-catchers into the mini and joining us at Whole Foods in La Jolla for our Buy-cott to show support for Whole Food's CEO John Mackey. Details here.

All that community activism should make you hungry so bring your apetite and your laptop for the blogging seminar to be held concurrently... or at the same time or something.