Conscious Capitalism with John Mackey Co-founder and Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market

(Visit: www.uctv.tv/) John Mackey, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and author of "Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business" offers a spirited defense of free enterprise and argues that businesses can have a positive societal impact while being profitable. Q&A moderated by Dean and Professor Steven Currall. Series: "UC Davis Graduate School of Management's Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series" [4/2013] [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 24960]

[@PearComputingDevices]

Going on 5 years, I would say this guy was spot on and ai agree with much of what he said. I am a capitalist, a free market capitalist and a small business owner. It was many of these philosophies that inspired me. By the way, Whole foods still pays $15 not $11 and you did get employee stock options and health care fully paid for by the company before the merger. So, don't believe everything that you breath. whole foods could have given every employee a 20k bonus yearly and they would still get dart throwers. But you see this kind of despotism in the educational world as well. Your not to question your government, but look at that corporation. Well, I think we would do ourselves a favor.by looking at both with the same set of standards. Ironically you can choose to interact with most corporations, you simply can't government. But, I think as business people we do ourselves no favors just by focusing on profits and such. We should be looking at the Whole picture. So, I fully agree with this. Now I don't know if I like that list he gave.

[@nulledges]

Work/do business with companies with good ethical practices. They must respond to consumers; unless it’s gov who can force you to fund them at gunpoint. Finance is the language. If you won’t buy until they treat employees/environment/customers better, they have no choice but to make a change. Public scorn & ostracism are usually very effective as well. No war without willing soldiers. Help those directly or by proxy, but most importantly give yourself (energy & ideas). Convince others, not force

[@Octovisuals]

Mackey looks like a good man. Happy Amazon acquired Whole Foods as an investor of AMZN. Thanks.

[@purpledoot]

Thank you for connecting please provide me strength and love. @wholefoods

[@purpledoot]

What if nothing makes sense until now? I'm still here at 37 years old working with you.

[@i123456987654]

Amrion in 1997...good story

[@MdMd3003]

I love your principles and agree with them. Its exactly because too many companies do in fact only care about the bottom line that business has such a poor reputation. The responsiblity for restriction imposed on business can be laid at the door of these companies. Its because they cannot be trusted to not run out of control and rampage over the environment, society and the economy in the name of profit that regualtion is required.

[@carnivoroussarah]

Ahhh rationalist. Thank you.

[@dariankaltenbach8062]

You buy shoes from Chinese sweatshops. These death machines run off of your dollars, idiot.

[@purpledoot]

Making $15/hr engaged to an Indian. Learned everything I needed to know in grocery stores and in life. Your welcome and thank you. Let's do this. ;-)

[@carnivoroussarah]

What about that you'll run out of water in 40 years due to water pollution?

[@dariankaltenbach8062]

​@@carnivoroussarah ... Water pollution? Don't you mean running out of aquifer water? You are aware of the damn water cycle, right? How much research do you put into these opinions, holy crap.

[@randy95023]

I'm a firm believer in Capitalism and Austrian Economics. Still, I feel so sad that many people in our rich nation live in, or near Poverty. Being a staunch Libertarian I have an inner struggle that wants to "share the wealth" with our nation's Working Poor. This makes me almost scizophrenic in my political thinking. How can we remain free and still find a way to truly help lift the bottom 20% of our population? Can I be that rarest of creatures, the Laissez Faire Capitalist with a heart?

[@abhimanyukarnawat7441]

randy95023 why not help them be producers?

[@justinsimon154]

I've found someone like me!

[@alekai2178]

everyone deserves equality of opportunity, thats where having a heart comes on, make it fair for everyone to climb the latter and be their best version. But If someone doesnt wanna put the work in to have a successful life thats on them. its balance

[@hahaclintondix2815]

Factually incorrect. The poorest people in america are still average in terms of wealth on the world scale, thanks to capitalism. Embracing socialist policies will hurt everyone, including the poor.

[@carnivoroussarah]

I'm a libertarian socialist. Sounds very similar but libertarianism is not the same as favoring capitalism at all. I wish for little government and little business. Just pure bliss. But I'm idealistic and I recognize that humanity will probably be wiped out soon so what's the point in trying when rich billionaires are too stupid to see that their actions have consequences, like idk the environment collapsing on us.

[@i123456987654]

yeah, i tranferred schools too

[@KLAUDIA-ui3tq]

❤❤❤..🤓..luV me a "NERD"...ty for the inspiration & the knowledge...💫💫💥

[@Twebbinator]

We love you back🤓

[@Aquaus]

😂😂😂

[@selfexpressedbabe]

Amazon doesn’t have these same views, so why sell to them if Mackey cares so much about conscious capitalism?

[@Daily_Llama]

I don’t want conscious industry. I want the best quality, cheapest product and I don’t want my product to preach to me about how admirable they are. I don’t want corporations to have access to 501cs because all they do is turn them into political profit centers where they use the bottom worker as indentured S words while the supposed admins make six figure salaries. The corporation gets a paid for protestor and a tax write off, the 501c gets access to funds not within their natural sphere of legitimate influence and the consumer gets nothing accept a product at an increased cost and misleading hyperbole out of the supposed charity. Ever wonder why PETA protests? It’s not for animals. It’s so corporations can us S word labor to create a force against their capitalist competitor. They’re a hired hand of protestors organized by rich people at the top of the supposed charitable organization.

[@adamhonestyanddecency5054]

Blahblahblahblah....it's 2:10 and I'm tuning out. Someone should post the important parts of this video for people who don't care about painfully drawn out extraneous crap.

[@johnwesley4709]

he pays his employees $11/hour minimum and its the most profitable grocery store in the USA. murica

[@abhimanyukarnawat7441]

try starting a business,I dare you,I double dare you.

[@adamhonestyanddecency5054]

That's just to start. Even lower management does well, and getting there isn't that hard. And it goes up from there. At the Whole Foods store I worked at in St. Louis, an Assistant Manager made 70k per year without a college education.

[@carnivoroussarah]

@@abhimanyukarnawat7441 Some of us don't want to trash our morals for money idiot. Simple minded folk.

[@michaelsuarez6413]

@@abhimanyukarnawat7441 lll

[@Daily_Llama]

7:25 And we have utilized CHARITY FOR EVERY ONE OF THOSE 40,000 years and it didn’t create ANY PROGRESS. What changed, was the simple act of the mutual rewarding transaction. Charity only wastes money through inept organizational abilities and moreover they callously dismiss our own responsibilities as individuals. Have you ever seen one of those videos where an elderly Asian person is walking down the streets oblivious to their surroundings and everybody just walks or drives by? That occurs more in socialist countries because citizens get subconsciously and often consciously trained to think they are supposed to do nothing and but let the “proper” authorities do the work. I saw this for myself the other day. I tripped over an untied shoe lace and stumbled into the middle of the highest volume street in Columbus Ohio, High Street. As I lay in the street and cars whipping around the corner, an obvious Leftie young man (The hair tells all) see this as he is walking towards me but does exactly nothing accept walk by me. So a twenty something child watched a grey haired 48 yr old stumble into a very dangerous situation and he completely neglected his duty as an individual to see if I even could get out of the street. He literally walked around me and never looked back. In contrast, a person more my age, RAN from one side of High St to make sure vehicles coming around the corner could see their was a man laying in the middle of the street. We have responsibilities and corporate funded charity only reenforces the idea others should do the heavy work, we ourselves are responsible for achieving. I like Mackey but I don’t shop at Whole Foods for the exact reason I don’t buy a Subaru. THEY MAKE DECISION WITH *MY* *MONEY* THAT I CAN’T BE ENTIRELY SURE IS AN ADMIRABLE endeavor.

[@carnivoroussarah]

Idk maybe intellectuals don't like big business because of the environmental damage that those businesses factually cause. Not all, but the vast majority.

[@dariankaltenbach8062]

You probably buy shoes that were made in a Chinese sweatshop (nike). These businesses are doing your bidding like they do for the majority of people. If a green business openned, but they had to charge you more, you wouldn't go there, I guarantee. You just like to think you would.

[@Daily_Llama]

Cronyism is not crony capitalism. Crony capitalism doesn’t exist as a whole. You could say anything is subject to cronyism. Every High School in the world is based on cronyism. Socialism experiences more cronyism than any other political body. Oligarch are a product of cronyism. Cronyism is not a function of capitalism. It’s a function of *social* *organization* that uses capitalism to wreak havoc on the natural mutually rewarding transaction.

[@Wisdombluetooth]

Yeahhh 11 billllion dollar with you and America has homeless and hungry and a crappy medical system...never mind hunger wwide

[@abhimanyukarnawat7441]

Fuck off.

[@abhimanyukarnawat7441]

also liberals are evil margaritas,not to mention idiots.

[@AJewFR0]

Did you even listen to the talk? The amount of dirt poor poverty of population has gone from 80% to 19% since these no good capitalist took over.

[@carnivoroussarah]

@@AJewFR0 Yep listened to all of it. You fell for it, didn't you? Question everything and everyone equally and then you can speak like you know better, narc.

[@lifeisneverthesame910]

@@carnivoroussarah Maduro and Chavez would be proud of you.

[@suzannfulbright5652]

Not once does he define the "Principles of economic freedom" that he praises repeatedly? How is the assumption made that Capitalism delivers economic freedom? The last time Capitalism raged through American society without any regulation whatsoever, American society was highly economically stratified (which is a state of economic oppression, not economic freedom) and the state of labor was shameful (have we already forgotten Oakie slave labor in California and worker camps in manufacturing, the double exploitation of workers at the Pullman factory, the exploitation of "unmarriageable women" in the Cotton factories in Lowell MA and the Work Houses of Industrial England?). And it brought us the Great Depression. As I recall Adam Smith was an advocate of "Cottage Industry Capitalism," not Corporate Capitalism. The founders DEMANDED that corporations had to prove they operated in the welfare of society, not their richest shareholder, or they were not allowed to form. The French invented the Guillotine because Capitalism failed to deliver on "equalite, liberte and fraternite." The minute Reagan announced plans for "deregulation" working people began to suffer wage stagnation that lives with us to this very day. The FACT is and history has demonstrated over and over and over again that Capitalists are incapable of regulating themselves. This so-called "economic freedom" without fail ends in highly stratified, severely oppressed societies, which, thanks to Reaganomics is the direction we have been headed for four decades and continue toward so long has this AUTHORITARIAN "trickle-down theory," this economic stupidity, is so blindly embraced. No revolution can deliver freedom until hierarchal, consequently oppressive, structures of society are addressed.

[@selfexpressedbabe]

So good. Laws put into place after the depression created the middle class and those laws have one by one been dismantled… I’d say we might be heading towards another depression