Has Whole Foods' CEO Gone Completely Bananas?
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Has Whole Foods' CEO Gone Completely Bananas?
John Mackey's attack on health care alienated every possible ally. But it was still useful.
By Mark Gimein
Posted Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 6:04am
Whole Foods (WFMI), we thought we knew ye, but oh, boy, it turns out we didn't. Before last week, Whole Foods was the model of liberal corporate citizenship. With its well-paid, well-insured workers, commitment to healthy eating and organic farming, and slabs of $19.99-a-pound wild salmon, it was a place that the health-conscious, socially conscious, upper-middle-class establishment could call their own.
Then last week, John Mackey, Whole Foods' founder and rambunctious chief executive, decided to insert himself in the health care debate with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that attacked not only the Democratic health care plan but the very idea that basic medical care (or for that matter, food) was something that everybody was entitled to. Wait a second. The chief executive of Whole Foods?
This is a man who gives all of his workers health insurance when many of his competitors don't (and who would benefit if they had to), and whose whole business is about selling to the organic-arugula-munching, enviro-conscious Obama voters. Now liberal commentators are up in arms, a movement to boycott Whole Foods has sprung up overnight, and the mainstream media is left scratching their heads at what Eric Etheridge of the New York Times tactfully calls the "most unexpected" episode in the health care debate.
If you had set out to write an op-ed designed to alienate Mackey's customers, you could hardly have done so more efficiently than Mackey himself. The money quote from Mackey's polemic: "A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This 'right' has never existed in America." Mackey's solution to the health care mess: wholesale deregulation of the insurance market. Plus a shift to a plant-based diet that will enable most of us to live for 90 or even 100 years, which will mean that we won't have to worry about health care all that much anyway.
Mackey's liberal critics have taken his attack on health care as a signal that the Whole Foods chief has finally revealed his true stripes as a rabid right-winger who believes, as the Whole Foods boycott site puts it, "that healthcare is a commodity that only the rich like him deserve." But the beauty of the whole package is that taken all together it seems almost calculated to turn off every possible ally. Upper-income liberals think he's betrayed them; moderates (even those who oppose universal care) want at all costs not to get roped into a position that raises the specter of people dying in the streets for lack of food and basic medicine; and red-blooded, Ayn Rand-reading libertarians don't want to be lectured about what to eat.
There's something about food that has always elicited and even sharpened the messianic impulse—think of Alice Waters, or go back much further to the religious vegetarianism of corn flakes inventor W.K. Kellogg. We all learned the grade-school canard that "we are what we eat." People who deal with what we eat tend to take this too literally and develop odd ideas about how radically we can change ourselves. So you can think of Mackey's extreme ideas as something of an occupational hazard. But even if Mackey's ideology veers from the scary (a world without any right to medical care) to the loony (a world where good nutrition has magically solved our health care problem), it's nonetheless a useful contribution to the health care debate. With his earnest hope that we can all live to 90 by eating better and his toe-curling philosophizing about rights, Mackey manages to bracket some of the most extreme views on health care, and show both sides just how unappealing and impractical they are.
Photograph of John Mackey by Getty Images.
Comments
Whole Foods CEO
I encourage people to read his op-ed. It had many excellent points, particularly in regard to personal responsibility.
I however think he left out the most important point. Namely, that according to the Social Security Administration, by 2050 there will be about 2 workers for every beneficiary. There are simply not going to be enough workers to meet the socialist aims of the left. The communitarian ideals of SS and Medicare are going to implode. Also, have you seen Obama's budget projections? We are out of money.
Mackey's POV is important, becuase as the welfare state collapses there needs to be an alternative. Thankfully, we already have the model -- the economic liberty and freedom that is part of "classical liberal" tradition of America. :)
Free Thinker
John Mackey is cool.
He's a free thinker who sees things as they are instead of seeing things through the groupthink glasses of others. His thoughts and conclusions are sound based on what information is available to him.
What he did was risky according to the conventional wisdom, but so was Galileo's conclusions. I'm not saying that this guy is a Galileo, just that he sees what's there and tells you what he sees. A very admirable trait in any age.
I see a similarity between the Vatican of 400 years ago and the partisan groups that hog the media today. They will kill you or excommunicate you if you don't go along with them.
How irrational is it to boycott a business just because a guy who works there has an opinion they disagree with?
Do you want those kind of people in charge of YOUR government program? Hah! Give me liberty 'cause these clowns would give me death.
John Mackey is cool.
And I do shop at Whole Foods. Sometimes. When I need some good cheese or need some ladyfingers or nori.
Pull up a chair...
This has little or nothing to do with Whole Foods or boycotts. This is about doing the right thing. The world is full of 'smart people'; Unfortunately, it is sadly and seriously short of 'wise people'. The difference is that smart people know what to do, yet, don't do it; Whereas, wise people apply their knowledge. Intelligence does little to help (in the form of useless trivia); Whereas, wisdom is what is essential.
This has everything to do with responsibility. That is what freedom is, a responsibility, not a right. This is another tragically rare quality in North America. Even among those who often act responsibly, there is large-scale social posturing or pandering to the ignorant and irresponsible for the sake of popularity (certainly not wise OR responsible in my perspective), thereby acknowledging tacit approval of - or perpetuating - their disability and fostering their ignorance and irresponsibility. Many, even the seemingly wise, will throw away their moral integrity - morality and ethics - for the sake of popularity. In addition, many people (who claim to be well-educated, despite their penchant for childish entertainment that sets poor examples, sarcasm, greed and general lack of compassion) eat too much, smoke too much, lie too much, set poor examples themselves, do whatever they want...and then they spend the rest of their time trying to justify it, regardless of whether there is justification or not. Sure, they suck up the ignorant entertainment shoveled at them and accept/enjoy it; Meanwhile, they criticize and boycott junk food, etc. Both things are bad for the same reasons. They are unhealthy. One physically, the other mentally.
How about some continuity, some consistency? In a free country, people responsibly exercise their freedoms without encroaching on the freedoms of others. That is not our America. In America, the majority exercise their freedoms without concern for the freedoms of others. Americans don't live in a free country, they live in a chaotic one. Do the research. It would be wise for people to realize that the only real reason for Law Enforcement or Government in the first place is because most people are irresponsible and need a babysitter. That is a tragedy. People can't do the right thing. They cannot be expected, as a whole or in part (an Oligarchy), to manage responsibility. The majority of people do what they want...not what they should, not what they need and not what is good for all...but what is good for themselves.
What is Socialism? Forced responsibility for those who are unable to manage it themselves. That is not at all an offensive idea, except for the fact that so many people are in need of it because they can't manage it themselves. It is only disturbing because it is necessary, not because those in charge are trying to apply it. It is negative because we should be above that; Yet, we are not. Once again, people trying to justify their irresponsibility by giving something so obviously necessary a negative reputation when it is the negative reputations of irresponsible citizens that are truly to blame for the necessity of such a plan. There's something to think about the next time you're trying to get the police and US Government out of your face.
As soon as American society becomes responsible as a whole, I will be more than happy to invest my time listening to their complaints. Until then, kindly stop pointing fingers and work on your own responsibility, set good examples and try to be consistent and not so dependent on the opinions of others, especially when they are setting poor examples. If this doesn't apply to you, however rare a group you are a part of, it is not intended for you. For the rest...and you are in incredibly plentiful (and disturbing) company, it does.
Idealism helped build America, and it will destroy America, because it is no longer the time for Idealism, it is time to get real.
Fools
What amazes me most is self proclaimed smart people asserting competition and capitalism when they ignore the bias in the real world. Corruption, graft, back-room deals, and many fundamental mechanisms of capitalism and competition DO NOT EXIST! In addition, competition requaire the knowledge to chose from among competing options. Individuals would need to earn MDs to make the medical decisions necessary for economic models to apply. It is simple, look at the comparison of costs and quality of health among industrialized nations; the USA is a joke. Do NOT believe the lies about poor quality in those countries because a few thousand individuals had DELAYS in care--primaily elective. Contrast those small percentages of DELAYS with the MILLIONS of denials for US citizens. (Million in the USA, the self-proclaimed richest nation, are homeless and without insurance.)
Healthcare Reform
I can tell you unequivocally that health insurance organizations consider health insurance a commodity. Moreover, I have seen it all: insurers protected from competition by state regulators, inefficiency and waste at levels higher than ANY industry in the USA, back-room dealmaking, and much more. I have worked at high levels for years in healthcare and other important US industries and speak from experience. In terms of the propsed and modified versions presently circulating in Washington DC, NONE will constrain healthcare inflation OR improve quality--including access to over 55 million needy US citizen. The insurance industry need WAY more than reform; it is antiquated and deliterious to our economic future. The discussions surrounding buying co-ops are the most offensive. Co-ops WILL lower quality and raise costs. Co-ops have been in existence for many, many years and DO NOT increase competition. Moreover, the discussions about dropping pre-existing conditions from underwriting is a joke because most states already mandate guaranteed issue group policies that do NOT consider pre-existing conditions. The politicians, special interests, and lobbyists are liars and scum. The result will be forced enrollment of the under and un-insured, higher profits to MDs, hospitals, and INSURANCE COMPANIES, further waste, and lower quality of life and healthcare. They are sucking the lifeblood and future of this country away. THE USA IS DOOMED IF PEOPLE DO NOT GET SERIOUS AND WAKE-UP!
wow
Since when is personal responsibility and deregulated competition considered "radical" ?
Mark Gimein must have graduated from the Gibbs Pelosi Obama International School of Journalism with a degree in Liberal Bias Studies.
A-Whole Foods
You overlooked another common trait of Utopians: Inevitably, they are insufferable assholes.
-- MrJM