Whole Foods CEO Warns: ‘Capitalism Cannot Be Replaced With Disastrous Socialism’
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/29/2020 – 23:00
Global leaders are using the virus pandemic to exert control over the world’s population under the guise of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The pandemic has provided elites with an opportunity to reset the global economy and abandon capitalism for socialism.
In the US, business leaders and politicians are fretting over a socialist system under a Biden presidency.
Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey recently spoke with America Enterprise Institute’s President Robert Doar about what socialism would mean for the country. Mackey called it a “failed system that “impoverishes everything,” according to Just The News.
While referring to the criticism of “trickle-down economics,” Mackey told Doar that socialism means “trickle up poverty.”
“We have to recognize that some of the progressive insights are important and they shouldn’t go away, but we can’t throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism, that will be a disaster,” he said. “Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years, and 42 failures, it doesn’t work, it’s the wrong way. We have to keep capitalism, I would argue, we need conscious capitalism.”
Mackey said one of the biggest problems plaguing the capitalism versus socialism debate is that businesses and corporations’ motivations are often misunderstood by the working-class.
“Until we get this corrected, capitalism is always going to be disdained and criticized and attacked,” he said. “It’ll be attacked for its motivations, because its motivations are seen as somehow impure. Yes, of course, business has to make money. If a business doesn’t make money, it will fail, but that doesn’t mean that its purpose is to make money.”
He said the business community must convey the benefits of capitalism to the livelihoods of Americans, otherwise, the implementation of socialism will mean a path to poverty for all.
“It needs to evolve, otherwise the socialists are going to take over — that’s how I see it, and that’s the path of poverty,” he said. “They talk about trickle down wealth, but socialism is trickle up poverty. It just impoverishes everything, that’s my fear, that the Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been. This is not new.”
Mackey explained that the US’ university system is “anti-capitalist.” He said it starts with the lack of “business people” teaching in college business programs.
“Intellectuals teach, mostly intellectuals, who’ve never actually been in business at all, right? It’s very interesting,” he said. “And who don’t actually understand business, who don’t particularly understand entrepreneurship, and actually can oftentimes be hostile towards the very thing they’re teaching. So that’s a particular challenge.”
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Despite Mackey’s strong dislike for socialism, Whole Foods has been described as a fairly liberal company. In the past, he has identified as a self-proclaimed libertarian.
And it wasn’t just Mackey last week with a warning about socialism – Republican Senator Tim Scott from South Caroline told Fox News that if Democrats win the two Senate seats in the Georgia runoffs in January, the left will transform America into a socialist state, adding that it would be ‘game over for our nation’.
“There’s no doubt when you think of the elections in Georgia, it’s not simply controlling the Senate, it’s controlling the legislative agenda for America,” said Scott.
An elitist attempt to push socialism could spell disaster for the country and mean more control over society.