Whole Foods boycott: Reader rejoinders
A reader, Bennett Johnson of Mill Valley, e-mailed me his disagreement with my skeptical take on the Whole Foods boycott campaign, itemized in today's paper (2d item).
Herewith (links added):
I am a business man who loves Whole Foods (My family has shopped there for decades), but supports the boycott. I thought I would drop you a note to help clarify what's going on: why the boycott makes sense, why it can be extremely effective.
Mr. Mackey is not the first CEO to think that he is smarter than his customers. We have seen a lot of that in the last year or so. Whole Foods has enjoyed a special status and special trust with liberal, educated consumers. This unique status and trust are essential elements of the Whole Foods business model.
It is astonishing that a CEO would so brazenly break the trust, and openly risk such a valuable relationship. He will find that it is much easier to lose than to gain trusted relationships with customers.
The language in his article may have sounded innocuous, but educated consumers know that his call to dismantle Medicare and to rely on charity handouts is simply extreme right-wing ideology. It certainly doesn't amount to a "plan" or a viable alternative for 47 million Americans without health insurance.
And while it is great that Whole Foods employees get health insurance, customers are tired of CEOs who brag about doing the right thing, seemingly embracing an ever-lowering bar of decency that makes them look-good.
His "alternative" or "plan" not only did nothing to address the uninsured crisis, it failed to address spiraling costs. I am all for tort reform and cost transparency, but as you know, these will have a marginal effect on real costs overall.
We did not hear from Mr. Mackey when the Bush administration and the Republican congress made a $7 trillion budget-busting giveaway to big pharma in the last Medicare bill. Nor did he make a reference to it. Instead his supposedly "libertarian" view is that we should simply de-fund Medicare, which of course would end in tragedy for millions of Americans.
A word on boycotts: don't expect to see grocery aisles empty overnight. The boycott has to build considerable momentum. And that is what is happening. Over 15,000 people have signed up on the boycott page on Facebook -- in less than a week. (Starting with 300 on Friday morning).
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Another reader, Dave Heventhal of San Francisco, had a rejoinder to Margaret Thatcher's quote -- "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" -- cited by John Mackey.
"The problem with capitalism is that eventually only a few can afford health care or retirement."
| August 19 2009 at 10:34 AM
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