Here ya go. From John Mackey (the CEO)'s blog, his keynote from a few years ago.
http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/02/At the time I started my business, the Left had taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society and the environment. I believed that "profit" was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong. The most important thing I learned about business in my first year was that business wasn't based on exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on voluntary cooperation. No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the market place; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliersthey all need to cooperate to create value for their customers. If they do, then any realized profit can be divided amongst the creators of the value through competitive market dynamics. In other words, business is not a zero sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win gameand I really like that.
However, I discovered despite my idealism that our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines and taxes.
Were we profitable? Not at first. Safer Way managed to lose half of its capital in the first year$23,000. Despite the loss, we were still accused of exploiting our customers with high prices and our employees with lower wages. The investors weren't making a profit and we had no money to donate. Plus, with our losses, we paid no taxes. I had somehow joined the "dark side" I was now one of the bad guys. According to the perspective of the Left, I had become a greedy and selfish businessman.
Abandoning Leftist Philosophy
At this point, I rationally chose to abandon the Leftist philosophy of my youth, because it no longer adequately explained how the world really worked. With my Leftist interpretation of the world now shattered, I looked around for alternative explanations for making sense of the world.
I stumbled into reading Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn RandI read all of them. I said to myself, "Wow, this all makes sense. This is how the world really works. This is incredible." Then I became Laissez Faire Books best customer for the next five years. I think I read every book in their catalog. If any of you in the audience have written books, I have probably read them.
I identify myself as a Libertarian. I am one of those people who actually votes Libertarian. I have voted strictly Libertarian since 1980. You sometimes hear that argument, "Why do you vote Libertarian? You're just throwing your vote away." I always say, "Gosh, if everybody had that attitude toward their vote, then the Libertarian candidate would get elected."
What I love most about the freedom movement are the ideas of voluntary cooperation and spontaneous order when channeled through free markets, leading to the continuous evolution and progress of humanity. I believe that individual freedom in free markets when combined with property rights through rule of law and ethical democratic government results in societies that maximize prosperity and establish conditions that promote human happiness and well being.
Unfortunately, despite of all my enthusiasm and formidable debating skills, I have had little success converting people to the freedom movement. Has that been your experience as well? The freedom movement remains a small, relatively unimportant movement in the United States today. The question is, "Why?" I want the freedom movement to sweep the world. So how can we make the freedom movement a more vital and dominant intellectual and cultural movement in the United States?
On why socialized healthcare is bad:
Now let us discuss some of the ideals and goals that I think we should embrace as a movement. Who among you believes that socialized medicine is the answer to the health care crisis in America? The Left believes this is the answer: equal access to the health care system for all Americansno one denied for financial reasons, in a single-payer system. Socialized health care seems very idealistic, and as such, appeals to many people. However, as Milton Friedman taught us, there is no such thing as a free lunchin health care or anywhere else. We know the single-payer system means health care rationing through queuing up in long lines for expensive treatments and denial of some services to many of the elderly as too expensive. We know that uncaring government bureaucrats will run a single-payer system and without the discipline of competitive markets won't provide quality customer/patient service. We know that health care innovation and progress will slow down tremendously, because much less money will be dedicated to medical research since such research is long-term by nature and easily sacrificed to current budget limitations.
Not bad for a CEO.
And here's the quote that impressed me the most:
When I was a naive (some people in the audience by this time probably think I'm still naive) and idealistic young man, I migrated to the Left for my value system. Why did I do that? Because the Left provided an idealistic vision of the way the world could be. However, the reality of the Left's vision proved to be terribly flawed. Its socialist economic system not only didn't work very well, but in its communist manifestation it justified monstrous governments directly responsible for the murders of over 100 million people in the 20th century. Despite the horrible track record of leftist ideology, millions of young Americans continue to migrate to an intellectually bankrupt Left because the Left still seems to be idealistic, and idealism is magnetic to the young. Idealism will always be magnetic to the intelligent and sensitive young people of the world.
Damn.
That is one of
the hands-down best summaries of the flaws of leftism I'd ever seen.
