Whole Foods Founder & CEO John Mackey is a man on many
missions. He advocates good eating and wholesome living, of course,
but he also has a higher calling. He wants to defend liberty. He
wants to champion capitalism in the public square. He wants to
share the beautiful ideas of Hayek, von Mises, and Friedman, which
opened his eyes to “how the world really works.” And he wants you
to revel in the wonder of a system that has surrounded you with
previously unimaginable prosperity. He wants you to understand it
and love it so you will defend it too.
Mackey discussed the ideas behind his new book Conscious
Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business in a
conversational interview with Tucker Carlson Monday evening at
the Cato Institute. Although the book itself was hardly referenced,
Mackey’s libertarian message of confident capitalism grounded in
compassionate values was clear. Two points in particular stood out.
According to Mr. Mackey, businesspeople exhibit great ignorance
about the capitalistic system. His view is shared by Cato President
John Allison and organizations such as the Bastiat Society, which
was founded to educate businesspeople about the market process.
Entrepreneurs’ reluctance to embrace market principles and espouse
capitalism’s virtues places them in a disadvantageously defensive
position in dealing with its many critics. Mackey’s vision is that
businesspeople espouse the system by which they benefit
society.
The second consideration of note was existential, a pall hanging
over all else like the specter of collectivism. We need to have two
major conversations in the 21st century, Mackey said.
The first is about how to roll back government, which has grown so
large as to threaten calamity. The second is defining the proper
roles of government, which he sees as legitimate and important but,
as a minarchist, severely limited. He did not address these broad
concerns, however; his main purpose was presenting a compelling
narrative intended for a uniquely vulnerable, strategically
important audience. As noted, he pitched his book as a resource for
businesspeople to empower themselves in a world that badly
misunderstands them.
One observation of particular insight was the unfortunate double
standard businesspeople face in the court of public opinion. If a
politician heinously betrays the public trust, even with the widely
acknowledged corruption that pervades politics, his profession
isn’t diminished in the public eye. By contrast, Bernie Madoff and
countless other business crooks stain the humble entrepreneur with
their sins.
Mackey also addressed the state of economic freedom in America
today:
We’re in decline. And we’re in decline because our economic
freedom’s being stripped away. … The critics dominate the
narrative, and the people who defend capitalism make a big mistake:
they concede the moral high ground. … We’ve got to recapture the
narrative, and that’s what in the book we try to do. … People don’t
support capitalism to the same extent they did because they equate
capitalism with crony capitalism. … Most people are going to pursue
that. And if the government’s giving away money, most people are
going to line up to get it. … I think businesspeople need to speak
up if we want to keep a free society. And we’ve already fallen to
18th (in global economic freedom).
Asked how his values impact his business, he replied, “I
understand the principles that lead to prosperity in society. I
understand property rights. … I understand that it’s business
that’s uplifted humanity,” citing examples of remarkable progress
in the last 200 years. Whether he will succeed is, of course,
unknowable at this juncture, but as an autodidact possessed of
great idealism and an entrepreneurial impulse for action, John
Mackey offers a unique approach to an intractable problem: Helping
the individual understand his or her precious liberty, that it may
be held dear.
