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John Mackey fits the profile of a typical green-friendly liberal. He is
a vegan, practices yoga, and wears hiking boots to work. Behold the
founder and CEO of Whole Foods, Mecca for believers in organic foods,
which was recently recognized as one of America’s most valuable
companies according to BusinessWeek Magazine (and its stock multiple
has at times surpassed even Google’s). But principles still come before
profits in this natural food empire: Five percent of profits are
donated to local communities and environmental causes; stockholders are
given third priority behind customers and employees (who are lovingly
called “team members”).
Do not be fooled by the fair trade, cruelty-free exterior.
Mackey has a darker, not so crunchy inside. He despises unions and
prides himself on having kept them out of all 183 of his company’s
stores. “Instead of embracing the notion of the ‘expanding pie’ vision
of capitalism—more for everyone, or win-win,” Mackey argues, “they
[unions] frequently embrace the zero-sum philosophy of win-lose.” Aware
that union busting is illegal, Mackey persuaded the employees in the
few stores that dared to collectivize to discontinue their efforts.
Mackey’s customers, mostly Volvo-driving Kerry voters, have hardly
batted an eyelash, and have continued patronizing his stores. But
wouldn’t their soymilk turn sour if they knew that Mackey had voted for
the libertarian candidate in the last presidential election?
Mackey’s rapid ascent to minor celebrity status—fueled by his
company’s even faster climbing share price—has provoked a flurry of
profiles in publications like The Economist and USA Today, all puzzling
over his seemingly contradictory views. Can you have a social
conscience and love the market as well? Certainly. Can you do it
without falling into a contradiction? That is more difficult to answer.
Libertarians are not too often disposed to cuddle up to a
tree. For most, free markets unhindered by governmental
interference—labor regulations, taxes, and the like—take precedent over
old growth forests. Managers do not usually build cost-inefficient
solar panels to minimize their company’s environmental impact. They
adhere to Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman’s famous saying
that a company’s only “social obligation is to increase its profits.”
To them, incantations of the collective good are just sweet-sounding
claptrap, and morality is viewed as a matter of personal preference.
You want to marry someone of the same sex? It’s your life, love
whomever you want. You want to fry your brain on drugs? Go for it. Just
don’t come crying to the government when you can’t support yourself.
But this is a bit of a caricature. Most libertarians, or those
who lean that direction, are not counterculture anarchists, advocating
public immorality and a reckless disregard for the fate of others.
Sure, most of them have read Ayn Rand’s novels—perhaps even briefly
fell in love with Objectivism—but, like everyone else, they realized
that they were being callous pricks and soon thereafter forgot about
Howard Roark. Nevertheless, what is common from Milton Friedman to John
Mackey is a fervent, but tempered belief in individual choice.
Importantly, liberty does not have to come at the expense of society’s
plunge into an anarchic abyss; few libertarians would defend the choice
of an industry to discard toxic chemicals into a river.
What libertarians do is give free range to marketplace
morality, which is, as Friedman explains, “whatever…interests the
participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue.” Here
the Mackey-types emerge, coming from a Twilight Zone where a love of
fair trade and free markets converge. Supporting fair trade coffee and
hating taxes are not contradictory attitudes. When an individual buys
fair trade, he voluntarily chooses to pay higher prices to support
sustainable agriculture in small cooperatives in developing countries.
When taxed, however, citizens are powerless to prevent corporate
subsidies from being showered on American farmers, ceding their moral
authority to the government.
Can you expect free marketers to be imbued with such
morality? It is an uncontroversial point to allow people to volunteer
in their free time or donate to charity. But most likely, not everyone
will be so altruistic. And as a result, it would seem that the poor and
the environment will lose out.
The market, though, does not need the majority of consumers to
profess a higher morality. For instance, many apparel manufacturers,
like the much-maligned Nike, conceded to the demands of a small, but
vociferous, anti-sweat shop campaign and started monitoring their
sub-contractors. In doing so, the companies resuscitated lagging
profits and motivated a much larger group of (normally indifferent)
consumers to buy brands that promised adequate labor conditions. This
story shows that consumers want to inject some moral vigor into their
largely materialist lives—and that businesses respond. From
“hormone-free” to “dolphin safe” to “biodegradable,” products brandish
such quasi-moral labels with a righteousness seldom found outside of
religious circles.
There is a brutal competition for the moral high ground in the
marketplace; and that is where Mackey has positioned himself—at the
top. Though it may seem strange, market orthodoxy and a social
conscience can fit together nicely. As long as customers are allowed to
vote with their dollars, virtuous companies like Whole Foods will
continue to thrive, and maybe help save the world to boot.
Will E. Johnston ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House.
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