Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says he knows why so many people hate him after his August op-ed opposing President Obama’s health care reform goals.
“People try to size you up for what team your on,” he told the editors of the Libertarian magazine Reason in an hour-long interview last month. “If you’re on their team they love you and if you’re on the other team they hate you.”
Mackey then divulges what team he’s on. “I voted for Bob Barr,” he said when asked who he supported for president in 2008. Barr, a former GOP representative, was the Libertarian nominee. “I liked Ron Paul, but he didn’t get the Republican nomination, regretfully.”
Mackey founded the grocery chain synonymous with progressive politics in Austin in 1978. But in his Wall Street Journal op-ed in August, Mackey alienated some of his customers by slamming current Democratic health care reform efforts as moving America “much closer to a government takeover of our health care system.”
Mackey describes himself as a “capitalist” and says the idea has gotten a bad rap since it defeated Communism during the Cold War.
“We won, but people didn’t come to love capitalism,” he said. “People are always attacking it for being greedy and selfish and only caring about money.”
Mackey says young people are “drawn away” from capitalism because of the attacks.
“We’ve created this wall — on the one hand we believe not-for-profits and government are motivated by this deeper purpose: public service,” he said. “And then on the other side of this wall, we have corporations and businesses and we believe they’re motivated strictly by selfishness and greed.”
Watch Reason‘s abridged version of the interview:
