Comments on: Whole Foods and Health Care

By: Dollars and Sense

Dollars and Sense — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:39:05 +0000

Reply to Anonymous poster from Sept 10th (somehow missed your comment):

I don’t *quite* see the silliness you see. If a boycott will get an employer to stop doing something activists don’t want him/her to do, it can be a good strategy. If those activists want to work toward a society in which all workers are, essentially (collectively) self-employed, where’s the contradiction? Would a self-consistent socialist just simply have nothing to do with any capitalist whatsoever? Only on a bizarrely principled (and impractical!) approach. At any rate, using “free choice in the marketplace” is sometimes in the spirit of capitalism (as its proponents view it), e.g. when I “vote with my dollar” and buy organic food as a way to encourage producers to make more organic food available. Not a particularly radical approach. Boycotts are a much less individualistic approach–they depend on collective action, and not just on withholding your dollars from a particular business but publicizing the fact that you are doing so, publicizing the offending actions or stances of the company you’re boycotting, etc. This requires organizing, vs. just (individually) directing your dollars one way vs. another.

With that said, I agree with you that it is silly to think of capitalism as evil. And most people I know who think of them as socialists don’t think of capitalism that way. It’s not that capitalism (or capitalists) are evil, it’s that there are ways of arranging society that would make most people better off. Capitalists aren’t being evil by accumulating capital; they are just being capitalists.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:12:01 +0000

I think it also needs to be pointed out that the Organic Consumers Association, while not yet endorsing the boycott, has weighed in against WFM, connecting Mackey’s stance on health care and union organizing with Whole Foods’ greenwashing. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/09-12

By: Dollars and Sense

Dollars and Sense — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:13:45 +0000

To Anonymous #2: Respectfully: When I read Mackey’s piece, I see the standard (ok–I won’t call them right-wing, because that would be name-calling) market-based, individualistic, deregulatory positions that economists and health-care professionals and public health researchers have consistently said would drive up costs and leave people vulnerable. And when I read Harrison’s piece, I see precisely facts (and citations!) to counter those proposals, and alternatives. So maybe you could be more specific: where does Mackey depart from right orthodoxy? and where does Harrison fail to be fact-based?

“Who cares if ideas are right, left or in the middle?” What you might not be able to appreciate, as a Canadian, is the extent to which the right (by which I mean reflexively support free-market and pro-corporation policies) have captured the political culture. So we on the left here *do* care about whether policy proposals are from the right–we have been battered over thirty years by the right and their policies have really made life worse for most people.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:00:25 +0000

This goes to show the silliness of socialist thinkers. “Boycotting” is the use of capitalism to make an appeal (I won’t buy from your store because I don’t want to support your ______) yet socialists would suggest that “capitalism is evil”, so why would they use free choice(capitalism) in the market place to make their point. It is ironic that even when denying the truth with your mouth, your actions declare the reality that capitalism is the best economic solution in existence.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:57:53 +0000

As I started to read this I thought: “Oh good, reasonable, respectful debate over ideas rather than a rabid response to an opinion that doesn’t exactly match that of the more liberal in society.” Unfortunately, I was wrong. Rather than simply rebut Mackay’s opinions and assumptions with facts and alternatives the article eventually degenerates into dogmatic name calling.
Who cares if the ideas are right, left or in the middle? The idea of a discussion about health care is to share ideas and find the best solution, not just one that is touted by the intellectual bastions of either wing.
For the record, I am Canadian, I love our healthcare system and would choose it over a system which does not involve government, but it is not perfect and we too suffer from dogmatic positional diatribes when the subject comes up for discussion.

By: Dollars and Sense

Dollars and Sense — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:29:46 +0000

No–I didn’t visit Mackey’s blog, and no, I didn’t do any research before doing this blog post (beyond re-reading Mackey’s op-ed and reading Joel Harrison’s critique of it.

I haven’t bothered to go to Mackey’s blog now, even. So maybe you can tell me: how does the fact that the WSJ editors picked the title affect my claim–that the title led me to believe it would be silly, and in fact I found it silly?

The only way I can think it would is that Mackey is not as shrill as to pick that title. But his editors are! And his op-ed is still right-wing nonsense.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:10:57 +0000

3 weeks after the op ed was written and you’re to lazy to read the original, posted on Mackey’s blog? Your article starts out critical to the title as run in the WSJ, but it was WSJ editors who changed the title. Had you done a shred of research you’d be aware of this.