John Mackey CEO Whole Foods: “Waarom zijn intellectuelen anti-kapitalistisch?”

Whole Foods is de Amerikaanse variant van Marqt. Hip & happening. De CEO John Mackey is veganist. Hij heeft zijn bedrijf anti-hiërarchisch opgezet. Al gauw denk je dus dat Mackey links is. Niets blijkt minder waar. Zie de video hierboven waarin hij uitlegt waarom intellectuelen veelal anti-kapitalistisch georiënteerd zijn. Een mooie nagezonden toelichting op de klassieke uitspraak van de gerenommeerde sceptische klimaatwetenschapper Richard Lindzen: “Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears — but educated people are very vulnerable”

Pik onderstaande passage van Reason.com interview even mee of kijk de video hierboven.

reason: What I’m especially interested in talking with you about is the attacks that you see capitalism under, systematically. I know that, from reading your book, and from talking with you, you believe that capitalism is not only the greatest wealth creator, it helps poor people get rich, it helps everybody along the way. But you see it as constantly being misrepresented, even by its champions. Why is capitalism under attack?

Mackey: Intellectuals have always disdained commerce. That is something that tradesmen did; people that were in a lower class. And so you had minorities, oftentimes did it, like you had the Jews in the West. And when they became wealthy and successful and rose, then they were envied, then they were persecuted and their wealth confiscated, and many times they were run out of country after country. Same thing happened with the Chinese in the East. They were great businesspeople as well. So the intellectuals have always sided kind of with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kind of kept down. You might say that capitalism was the first time that businesspeople kinda caught a break, because of Adam Smith and the philosophy that came along with that, and the industrial revolution began this huge upwards surge of prosperity.

reason: Is it a misunderstanding of what business does? Is it envy? Is it a lack of capacity to understand that what entrepreneurs do, or what innovators do, is take a bunch of things that might not be worth much separately and then they transform it? What is the root of the antagonism towards commerce?

Mackey: It’s sort of where people stand in the social hierarchy, and if you live in a more business-oriented society, like the United States has been, then you have these businesspeople, who they don’t judge to be very intelligent or well-educated, having lots of money, and they begin to buy political power with it, and they rise in the social hierarchy, whereas the really intelligent people, the intellectuals, are less important. And I don’t think they like that. And I think that’s one of the main reasons why the intellectuals have usually disdained commerce: they haven’t seen it, the dynamic, creative force, because they measure themselves against these people, and they think they’re superior, and yet in the social hierarchy they’re not seen as more important. And I think that drives them crazy.

De klimaatwetenschappers zijn een groep intellectuelen die er tijdelijk in geslaagd zijn om zich samen met de milieubeweging met de aristocraten te verbinden, tegen het kapitalisme. In de video legt Mackey ook uit dat de systeemfouten niet van het kapitalisme komen maar van de reeds gearriveerden – oud geld en nieuw geld – die de vrije markt verstoren om hun vermogen oneerlijk te vergroten. Het windmolenkapitalisme zeg maar.