Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Rips AOC’s Green New Deal, Warns Against Socialism
The CEO of American multinational supermarket, Whole Foods, recently slammed the concept of socialism being pushed by progressive Democrats calling it a “disaster” and warning that it has failed everywhere it has been implemented.
John Mackey during a discussion with the American Enterprise Institute, sought to clarify what he described as the “single biggest misunderstanding about business and capitalism” which he said is the belief that businesses only exist to make money.
“Until we get this corrected, capitalism is always going to be disdained and criticized and attacked. It will be attacked for its motivations because its motivations are seen as somehow impure and yes, of course, business has to make money, business doesn’t make money it’ll fail, but that doesn’t mean that’s its purpose to make money,” the Whole Foods chief said.
As he tried to draw a comparison, Mackey said a good way to explain how businesses work is to examine how a human body has to produce red blood cells to survive. “If I stop producing red blood cells I’m going to die, but just because I have to make red blood cells does not mean the purpose of my life is to produce red blood cells.”
The Whole Foods executive went on to lambast progressives for pushing socialism and peddling false narratives about capitalism — which he said, instead of the villains, are actually “the heroes of the story.”
He also slammed the worldview of progressives which he said are always doubtful of sciences and innovations “except when it serves their ideology.”
“Progressives, because they dominate academia, Hollywood, and the media punch way above their weight class in terms of their actual numbers, but that’s the cultural war,” Mackey said.
Socialism a ‘disaster’
While noting that some of the things being raised by left-leaning Democrats are important, he reiterated that the country “can’t throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism.”
“That will be a disaster,” Mackey said. “Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years, and 42 failures, it doesn’t work, it’s the wrong way. We have to keep capitalism … we need conscious capitalism.”
Mackey also pointed out that some of the “disasters of progressivism” is that it propagates hate about the country — and people are made to believe that it is “the worst that’s ever existed.”
He then blasted progressivism as being “authoritarian, self-righteous” and that it “cancel[s] people who have different views.
Harder to do business
In the wake of the protests that happened across the country starting the summer, the Whole Foods CEO noted that the supermarket giant had “multiple” of its stores damaged and that such actions — being propagated by progressives are marking it “harder to do business.”
“America is in kind of a rocky place right now,” he said, noting that calls like “defund the police” are making it more difficult for businesses to operate and would push costs higher with the need to hire more security personnel.
He noted that the way businesses work also needs to change “otherwise the socialists are going to take over and that’s the path to poverty.”
“They talk about trickle-down wealth, but socialism is trickle-up poverty … it just impoverishes everything. That’s my fear, that the Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been,” Mackey added.
Businesses create progress
In further defense to the free market set-up, the supermarket chief said capitalism paves the way for innovations to happen that has pushed humanity forward.
“Innovationism is the greatest thing that humanity’s ever created,” Mackey said.
“If you go back 200 years ago when innovationism was really beginning to pick up steam … the average lifespan 200 years ago was 30 now it’s 72.6 in advanced countries, developed countries it’s closer to 80,” he continued. “Illiteracy rates 200 years ago across the planet were 88%, now they’re 12%.”
“Business people are not the villains of the story, they’re the heroes of the story,” Mackey added. “The entrepreneurs are the ones that create great progress and they’re universally vilified.”
He then ripped the overly-ambitious “ Green New Deal” proposal of self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying it will cause America “to regress.”
Mackey went further to say that socialism is increasingly becoming popular in the country due to false indoctrination — that businesses are “motivated by greed” and are “exploitative.”
“That is wrong,” the Whole Foods executive said. “Capitalism is the greatest thing humanity’s ever done, we told a bad narrative and we’ve let the enemies of business and the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that’s wrong … we have to counter that.”
