Is the Whole Foods Boycott Fair?
Friday, August 21, 2009 at 08:41AM Rule number one in business: Don’t insult your customers. (Spoiler alert: More vulgar version of this rule below.)
When Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that American citizens do not have “any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter . . . . [t]his "right" has never existed in America,” he succeeded in violating that prime rule. Thousands of Whole Foods customers have reacted with a boycott effort, including an online petition with 20,000 signatures so far.
This raises a question: Does Whole Foods deserve this kind of attack? After all, Mackey is a U.S. citizen and entitled to his political opinions. Nor is he the only CEO in the U.S. who is against health care reform. Perhaps it is unfair that Whole Foods is somehow being singled out. Moreover, a consumer boycott is more likely to hurt hourly employees than the CEO himself. Layoffs from tumbling sales could result in more people without insurance rather than less.
From a practical standpoint, Whole Foods’ problem is that it caters to a liberal progressive clientele. It advertises on its website that it “sells the highest quality natural and organic foods available” and is “caring about our communities and our environment.” It further claims that “our success helps us bring about change in the marketplace, which we hope will lead to good things for you and us and the planet.” A company like that is angling for upper class liberals, coincidentally one of the core groups pushing for health care reform. Mackey should have taken the hint when the Journal agreed to run his piece in the first place. Any article conservative enough to get past the editorial staff at the WSJ is bound to anger an upper class liberal.
On one hand, I sympathize with Whole Foods. It’s just an opinion, after all. Whole Foods isn’t in charge of U.S. health care, and certainly its CEO has as much right to express his opinion as anyone else. The problem, however, is that there is a good time and a bad time to express obstructionist views. Health care reform is becoming a more and more urgent matter, and obstructing its passage looks less and less like loyal opposition and more and more like a high stakes game of organic chicken. This year, health care costs are north of 17% of GDP, and by 2015 will exceed 20% of GDP. To do nothing is to court economic catastrophe. And to argue for a conservative free market approach at this late date is nothing short of hypocritical.
Republicans ruled Washington from 1994 to 2008, and did nothing over that span to reform health care. After the Republicans shot down the Clinton plan in 1994 and won the House and the Senate, they had every opportunity to put their own ideas into action. Bill Clinton was always a centrist president, and probably would have gone along with any reasonable proposal. None was offered.
America is at the point now where the condition of our health system has passed the point of urgency, and is headed towards emergency. Expenses are rising at 7.5% a year. Did you get a 7.5% raise last year? If so, can you expect to get a 7.5% raise next year, and every year until you retire and can apply for Medicare? If your answer is no, you will eventually lose your private insurance plan. Premiums will outstrip your income until you can no longer afford it. That is a certainty.
That's why it is way too late in the game for us to go back to the free market drawing board. Conservatives had their chance, a long, lingering chance, and they chose to sit on stacks of corporate profits instead. Mackey, a self-described libertarian, wants to let free markets work. Even if free markets do work, how long will it take? The only thing the current free market system has done is drive prices relentlessly upward. Mackey blathers about future deficits, but we have a deficit right now, and I fail to see how private insurance is going to pay it off. Since the rapid growth of Medicare costs doom us to deficits for the next few years anyway, why not quickly institute a public option, get control of costs from the bottom up, and reform the entire system all at once? That seems like the sensible path to a balanced budget. But expecting Blue Cross, United Healthcare, and Cigna to save us is a fool’s hope. These companies are motivated by profit. They couldn’t care less how large the federal deficit is.
We are in the eleventh hour, which is why, reluctantly, I favor the Whole Foods boycott. Heath care has dominated the news for about a month. It has taken a herculean effort just to get the fight to this point, which in my estimation still only offers a 50-50 chance of workable reform. We have reached take-no-prisoners time. We are at the point in the hockey game when the team that is behind pulls its goalie out so it can charge the opponent’s goal with every available player. If we lose here, it could be years before the chance comes around again, and by then, the carnage will only have mounted.
If Whole Foods has to be made an example of, so be it. For decades, corporations have been steering health care debate in a direction favorable to them. Billionaires always seem to have bigger megaphones than thousandaires. The only way corporate America will go along with reform is if it learns the lesson Whole Foods is about to learn today: Don’t piss your customers off.
Reader Comments (5)
It has been awhile since I wrote this article, so I had to look back to see if I really said that "only" political liberals or progressives go to Whole Foods. I said no such thing. What I said was that the "save the planet" sales angle appeals primarily to upper class liberals. I did not say that conservatives don't shop there. If you can find in the article any indication that conservatives don't eat organic foods you are reading a different article than the one I wrote.
The argument that the typical Whole Foods customer is an upper class liberal is a pejorative statement, to be sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Just like it is fair to say the typical Bud Light drinker watches NFL football. It doesn't mean all Bud Light drinkers watch football, just that a large number of them do. The makers of Bud Light think so too, or they wouldn't be advertising on so many football games.
If Whole Foods doesn't cater to the liberal upper class, how do you explain their store placement? All Whole Foods that I know of are near upper class, more highly educated neighborhoods -- places that tend to be liberal. In New Orleans they have one store literally in Uptown, near the university community; the other one is near Old Metairie -- NOLA's bastion of white liberalism if there ever was one.
It takes a biased mind to insert the word "only" where it was not used.
I've gotten a few negative comments about this post, which I find rather funny. Conservatives swear up and down by the free market, but they don't really believe in it when the chips are down. There are two sides to a free market. First, companies get to offer the services they want to offer, and second -- and here's the part you are not getting -- customers get to choose which companies they patronize.
If customers get angry at Whole Foods or any other company and choose to walk away, that's the free market at work, buddy. I wish more customers would turn their backs on companies that don't respect their customers' ethics. The world would be a better place.
One other thing. The notion that health care reform would put anyone in jail for not having health insurance is pure crap. And a lie, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. The bill as it stands would fine the uninsured less than $100, a penalty that would slowly increase, but not above about $1000. I don't like the idea of the government forcing people to get insurance either, but as a doctor I can tell you I have been stiffed for tens of thousands by patients who had no insurance, got sick, and ended up on my service in the hospital. Doctors and hospitals have rights too. We have the right to get paid for saving peoples' necks when they get sick, regardless of how irresponsible they are.
Somebody pays the bill when the uninsured get sick, and it isn't the uninsured, I can promise you that.