Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Rips Socialism Apart, Points Out the Greatness of Capitalism

(Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP, File)

It would appear that not every CEO is concerned about being woke in a time where being woke is a prerequisite for being accepted in our society. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods appears to be one of them.

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According to the Daily Wire, Mackey sat down for an interview with the American Enterprise Institute and laid into socialism and it’s supporters. This includes one New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Mackey’s commentary on socialism and the vilification of capitalism is a must-read. As he explains, capitalists and businesses are often viewed as the bad guys who are only out for selfish gain, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth:

Mackey said that the “single biggest misunderstanding about business and capitalism” was the notion that businesses exist solely to make money, noting that “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 they’re 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,” he continued. “A good way to explain it is, my body has to produce red blood cells and 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.”

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Mackey also made it clear that the “progressive” world view is anything but progressive and that the ongoing culture war is an attempt to replace capitalism with socialism:

The AEI host asked Mackey about a section in his book where he wrote about “cultural intelligence,” specifically three kinds of cultural intelligence: the traditional, the modern, and the progressive.

Mackey slammed the progressive worldview, which he said was distrusting of science “except when it serves their ideology.”

“Progressives, because they 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 added.

While saying that some of the things that progressives value are important, Mackey added, “but we can’t throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism.”

“That will be a disaster,” Mackey continued. “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, I would argue, we need conscious capitalism.”

Mackey blasted the “progressive” movement for pushing policies that are damaging to America including the “defund the police” movement, causing his company to be forced to hire more security guards.

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He also noted that socialism damages America by creating what he calls “trickle-up poverty.”

“They talk about trickle-down wealth, but socialism is trickle-up poverty,” Mackey said. “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. This is not new.”

In the grand scheme, Mackey notes that advancements brought on by capitalism and business have improved everything from wages to life-spans.

“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, it’s inaccurate and it’s doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people. We have to counter that,” said Mackey.

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