Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism

"...if you think about what really empowers the left to put high living-wage compensation, or minimum wages, or mandates of a bunch of benefits, or additional regulations on the business, it's because they don't think business is "good." They think business exists simply to maximize shareholder value and make profits. So if that's really the motivation for business, if it's not a more inclusive philosophy, then they feel quite justified in hamstringing business. Because they're basically a bunch of psychopaths running around trying to line their own pockets; we can't trust them to do the right thing, so we're going to have to do it for them.

 In a more inclusive view, business has these responsibilities to all its stakeholders, customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and the larger community. If business behaved like that, the impulse to regulate and control would be lessened."

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reason: Do you think we're shifting into a mode of capitalism where the idea of "doing well by doing good" is really starting to come into focus and will start energizing the way people think about business, and for-profits and nonprofits, and how the two may not be so diametrically opposed?

Mackey: I really do. When you asked me the previous question, do I feel resistance from traditional free-marketeers and libertarians? Yeah. Old ones. But as they say, social progress is made one funeral at a time. Young people are eager for these ideas. I've oftentimes gone to business schools and talked about this, and I see the professors with their arms crossed, saying, "This is about shareholder value." But the students, the MBA students, they're lapping it up, because this is exactly what they want to believe. "Yes, I can get rich, and I can do good." That seems like a win-win strategy to them and to me.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on entrepreneurship, snobbery, and the minimum wage