[Marxbites]

As stated, that free market proponents haven't done a good job in defending it, I'd counter that the leftwing entrenched in Govt, media & academe are the main reasons more progress hasn't been made in restoring lost freedoms and relimiting this unlimited Govt.

[dfwgator]

I thought he was a Hall of Fame TE with the Baltimore Colts.

[stacytec]

Good read, thanks.

[fatnotlazy]

"Coming out of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Mackey, a vegetarian, a former long-haired and bearded commune resident, a student of ecology, yoga and eastern philosophy..."

***
He used to be a hippie; then he grew up.

[Cobra64]

with sales last year exceeding $5 billion and a gross profit of more than $1.6 billion

Hmmm... A thirty-two per cent return on sales.

If the oil industry has a 9.5% return on sales, then this has to be price gouging! I demand a Congressional investigation.

[headsonpikes]

Mackey has voted straight Libertarian since those early days in 1980. Still, he says he's had little success in converting people to the concept of economic freedom or to an understanding of how the world really works, to the concept of how freedom, prosperity, human progress, spontaneous order and overall well-being are inherently channeled through a system of voluntary cooperation, private property, business competition and individual incentives.

I, too, voted Libertarian in the '80s. Indeed, I was a Libertarian candidate in more than one election.

Then I realized that the central idea of a free society is not misunderstood at all - in fact, it is not desired by a population conditioned by government institutions.

Orwell might as well have stayed a policeman in Burma.

[Jaysun]

"...with sales last year exceeding $5 billion and a gross profit of more than $1.6 billion — not a bad return in the grocery business.

That's miraculous. Hell hath no fury like a leftist scorned and transformed.

[pollyannaish]

"In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser," says Mackey. "It is a win, win, win, win game."

Simple and brilliant. Glad to have Mackey on our team.

[Paradox]

Whole Foods owner is a Libertarian? Who'd a thunk? I am shocked, I'll go there more often.

[Mikey_1962]

There are no peoples! There are no Russians. There are no Arabs!

There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars!!

petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!, Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels!!

It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! !

That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!
!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? (pause) You get up on your little twenty- one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. !

Those are the nations of the world today. "Network" 1975

[AnnaZ]

"The freedom movement remains a small, relatively unimportant movement in the United States today," he writes. "As a businessman who knows something about marketing and branding, I can tell you the freedom movement is branding itself very poorly."

Ping-a-ling.

Our sentiments exactly, and a huge potential customer.

;^)

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

"Politically, I drifted to the Left and embraced the ideology that business and corporations were essentially 'evil' because they sought profits. I believed that government was 'good' (if the 'right' people had control of it) because it altruistically worked for the public interest."

Very succinct explanation of the socialist mind set. I wonder if he ever read Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'?

[Mike Darancette]

The freedom movement, libertarians, and free market economists, he writes, have done a poor job of defending the social legitimacy of business, economic freedom, capitalism, individualism and free markets.

Libertarians ruin their message by the soical crap they try to force down people's throats.

[ladyinred]

Interesting article. I knew nothing about the man, but I sure love his Whole Foods stores.

[Lancey Howard]

Mises BUMP!

[BunnySlippers]

Bump

[steveyp]

ping