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“I’ve always felt that business is misunderstood by society,” John McKee said in a presentation at the Next 2023 conference earlier this month. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg-Getty Images
Former Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was recently “kidnapped.” And he deserves a little extra credit for his business acumen, if you don’t mind.
“I’ve always felt that the business has been misunderstood by the community,” McKee said during a presentation at the Next 2023 conference earlier this month, as first reported by industry publication Baking Business. “It is hated by academics, but we are the real value creators in the world. We are the ones creating the prosperity that lifts them all. We are not understood, but condemned.
The businessman listed a few heroes during his speech, including other businessmen like him: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie are “some of the greatest people who ever lived because of the great value they created.” It was reported.
The comments come as little surprise to those who have followed Mackie’s career. In the year In 2013, he published a book, Conscious Capitalism: Unleashing the Heroic Entrepreneurial Spirit. In it, he and his collaborator Rajendra S. Sisodia argues for an “inherent advantage to both business and capitalism.”
In the year In 2017 (the latest Forbes data available), Mackie had a net worth of $75 million. In the year In 2007, he lowered his own salary to $1. In the past, the libertarian has made inflammatory statements such as “socialists are taking over” and “young people don’t want to work”. He has been criticized for his views on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which he called “fascist.”
“Socialists are taking over,” McKee said in The Libertarian Magazine ReasonLast year’s podcast. “They are going around the institutions. They are taking everything. They are taking over education. They seem to own many firms. It seems they have taken over the military, it is still going on.”
He retracted what he said about the ACA, at least in part, and recently said he regrets an oft-quoted comment he made about unions in the 1980s: “The union is like herpes.” “It won’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and uncomfortable, and it stops a lot of people from being lovers.”
In the year “We live in a time where we are judged by the little mistakes we make in life,” he said on the Freakonomics podcast in 2020. “Hey, listen, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. That was wrong. I regret this. I wish I hadn’t said that. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I wanted to entertain people. And now it has become a scar,” he said.
At the next conference, Mackey discussed his work at Whole Foods, which he co-founded in 1980. He will retire as CEO of the grocery chain in 2022. For his next venture, Mackey plans to open a chain of health restaurants called Love. Life!
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