9,000 population and it was dwindling because there was no construction going. to reason had not been established. and the town had not a very bright future. population was dwindling, the junior chamber of commerce said something had to be done to attract attention to our good weather and tried to get the air base reactivated. they came up with an endurance flight because every time the flight was mentioned they said yuma, arizona and get to know about the interest in reactivating the air base of the first attempt failed and in august they stated several days and then had a major problem and it was hot, really hot, people said we would go up two or tweak thousand feet and it took of while to get parts and repairs done for the airplane and get it ready, the 24 sonatas they never

touched the ground until the tenth of october. >> in late 1949 the future of yuma, arizona was resting on the wings of one airplane. this weekend this history and literary life of yuma, arizona. today and noon eastern on booktv on c-span2 and sunday at 5:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span3. >> interesting. they had extraordinary roller-coaster. for most of their lives, she was an abject failure. than in almost no time at all suddenly he was the most popular man in the country, the man who saved the union on the battlefield and the united

states. >> she -- it was like a bright and beautiful dream, the most wonderful time of my life. i think that gives you some idea how much she enjoyed being first lady and how she thought that her husband had finally achieved the recognition he deserved to. >> the part of the conversation and julia grant's with your questions and comments by phone, facebook and twitter monday night on first ladies at nine:00 eastern on c-span2 and c-span3 and c-span radio and c-span.org. >> next on afterwards, john mackey talks about his book "conscious capitalism: liberating the heroic spirit of business". he argues the free market benefits business owners, consumers and workers alike. is interviewed by kim strassel of the wall street journal. this is an hour.

>> it is of delight to see you again. let's set the stage for this. we are going to pick up this book, see the title and think oh boy, here we go. another guy who doesn't like capitalism, who has a lot of criticisms of it, he made money as ceo and probably feeling guilty. the fact is you are quite a ferocious capitalist and what is interesting to me is you were not necessarily born that way but are somewhat of a convert and you talk in the book about your young life as a young man earth, a progressive, housing co-op, food co-op and start a business and your views, i will quote you, you embrace the ideology that business and corporations were essentially evil because they sought only profit. then you start your business and the next thing you know you are reading frederick hayek and milton friedman.

talk a little bit about that conversion, what you learned from your early experience and how you came to the point that you are writing a book not just calling capitalism a heroic enterprise that talking about the ways you want to defend it and improve it. >> i am very idealistic. of course i am a great believer in capitalism. i think business is heroic. it has lifted humanity about of the dirt, some of the statistics we discovered as we researched the book, a couple of hundred years ago eighty-five% of people live live on less than $1 a day, today is down to 16%. illiteracy rates across the planet were over 90%. today they are down 14%. our life span was only 30. to date is 68. seventy-eight in the united states, 80 in japan.

humanity has made great progress and we are great believers in what business has been able to do. it is not the villain in the tail, it is the good guy. when i was starting out i was young, went to the university of texas which is of pretty progressive city and i didn't study business. i studied philosophy and religion and world literature and history and pretty humanities. when i started the business i had no background in economics or business or anything but i knew that i was going to have really low prices and a really well and it would be a different type of business. i wasn't going to be like those other businesses and of course you meet a payroll and pay your bills and foundercapitalized your philosophy of business can evolve. it was interesting to me because

a lot of my friends saw me as a traitor. that i had gone to the dark side and the business was struggling. we manage to lose 50% of our capital in the first year. we started $45,000 and lost $23,000. renee, my girlfriend at the time the co-founded business with me, we will living on the third floor and only making $200 a month each, way below minimum wage even back then. i began to move away from that philosophy. i was trying to to figure out business, i started to read -- i read hundreds of business books, everything that was available, i read. to try to understand how to make the business successful. at the same time something has stumbled onto, people like george gilder -- dozens of other

thinkers i realize their explanations for how the economy worked and hamas security worked made a lot more sense than the half baked philosophy i have had as a so-called progressive still lie abandoned that philosophy. it didn't work. in the real world it was proved to be unsatisfactory so that is how i got started on it and the economics helped me become a better business person so much as they just gave me a world view that made sense of what business was actually doing and what i was doing as a business person. >> you now understand that all of these ideas like voluntary exchange, profits, that they all not only create good businesses but help society. what is conscious capitalism? how does it differ from what any of us would call plain old

wonderful capitalism? >> the understanding is we think business is good and it creates great value but it can be better. it has greater potential than is being realized. when you understand, look at the gallup poll that shows big business in the united states has an approval rating of 19%, 85% don't approve of business and even congress is at 17% which is about the same level, only a couple points below you realize people have lost confidence in business. the narrative about business and capitalism has really been controlled by the enemies of business and capitalism and if you study history you will see business people have always been held in dizzying. a lot of business wasn't done by the elites. the deletes were above common

trade and business was something that fell on the shoulders of minorities such as in the west, jews, and in the east the chinese who through hard work and enterprise often times made a success of their lives and made money and that created envy and persecution. the jews were run out of one country after another supposedly because of a different religion which contributed to it but a big part of it was they were economically very successful and that was disdained by the intellectuals. intellectuals have always hated business and we can't get into why that might be the case if it serves any useful purpose but most important is intellectuals are not friends of business, not in the past and certainly not today and so business is painted as fundamentally all about money. it is selfish, greedy,

exploitation of and only exists to make money. if you go to a cocktail party and ask somebody randomly what is the purpose of business, people give you an odd look because they will probably say what is the purpose of business, the purpose of business is to make money. that is not an answer because if you ask a doctor what their purpose is they are well compensated, they also need to make money but the won't semi purpose as the doctors to make money. dr. heels people. teachers educate. architects designed buildings, engineers construct things, journalists hopefully are helping to uncover the truth, potentially have a higher purpose of discovering what has been hidden away and bringing it to light and getting a good interesting story that hopefully is truthful.

professions' refer to a higher purpose that serves people and create higher -- business is the best value creator and world. it creates the goods and services, value and not just for a few. it is not a 0 sum game where someone wins and someone loses. it creates value for its customers, its employees, its suppliers, it's investors, and the communities it is up part of and all of that is done through voluntary exchange. business is fundamentally good and as we point out in the book it has the potential to be heroic in terms of lifting humanity to a higher level. >> you talk about doing that by having purpose like you said in terms of as the example you gave a doctor, you line -- whatever the aspects of conscious capital? >> we identified four key tenets of conscious capitalism. all four are interdependent.

you can't take them in isolation. they worked together in synergistic fashion. the first we talk about his business has the potential for higher purpose beyond making money. not that there's anything wrong with making money. that is one of the things business does, it creates value for its investor/stakeholders but just as my body produces red blood cells, if i stop producing red blood cells i'm going to die, but the purpose of my life is not to produce red blood cells. similarly business cannot exist if it is not profitable. it will not have the capital it needs to renew itself, to innovate, to repair equipment when it wears out, to respond to competition, so profit is essential to business, but every business has the potential for more transcendent purpose beyond that just as these other professions do. so first, business has to discover or rediscover its higher purpose and most entrepreneurs to create businesses in the first place are motivated by some higher

purpose. say it may not be conscious of it. it may not be explicit but i have known hundreds of entrepreneurs and only a few exceptions they tell me i started my business to get rich. most of them started their business because they were on fire about something, there is some idea, something they wanted to create, some difference they wanted to make in the world's, another reason than just to show that they could do it. it is only later when the business matures that we hear or the economists coming and interpret it is all about making money. the first higher purpose. and the second tenet of conscious capitalism is we have this stakeholder system that is not just about creating value for the investors but other stakeholders also a matter and there into dependent with one another. the customer's mater, the employees mater, the suppliers mater, the community's their

part of matter, so do the investors. a simple example i used to the retailers that explains this is the whole foods market, we try to hire the best people we can find, make sure they are well-trained and management's job is to help some flourish in the workplace, give them the tools they need and make sure they are happy because they are the ones that serve the customers so happy team members serve and create happy customers and have a customers create happy investors so all the stakeholders are interdependent. the company michael foods market has about 100,000 suppliers we do business with a round world and it is essential that they also flourish, they help create our competitive advantage, they help create the unique products and services that make whole foods market standout in the marketplace and is important our suppliers also flourished.

once you realize the business is creating value not strictly for investors of course it needs great value for investors as well put all the stakeholders are interdependent, you begin to view it as an integrated system and you begin to ask questions such as what strategies can we do in our business that allow all of our stakeholders to simultaneously flourish and prosper. >> what you do to do that? >> the more important question might be what do you do that might not result in creating the win/win/win scenarios and those might be strategies were one stakeholder is gaining and another one is losing which sometimes you might see in business for example where we need to get profits up so we're going to raise prices, cut wages, cut benefits bat, grind our suppliers down and that will result in tighter profits which

it might in the short run but then it set negative feedback -- feedback loops, they does your competitors, wages are low and benefits not as good so your employees begin to take jobs away from you with other companies, your suppliers don't have to trade with you and if you grind them down they will phase you out as a potential customer or deemphasized you as a customer so they are all connected together and the strategy that you have to do is how do we create values though they're all simultaneously winning. i will give you an example from wholefoods that oftentimes people think might be a trade off. we created a foundation called pull whole planet foundation which is macro credit loans in developing countries. we do those projects in the communities we are trading in so we'll put a project in costa rica, bananas, mangoes, coffee in costa rica so we are looking

to locate the credit where we do business. you're being philanthropic with investors' money, that is theft, you are basically -- you should be philanthropic with your own money. in the narrow sense you could make that case if it doesn't create value for the investors but what we found with the whole planet foundation is it is creating value for all of our stakeholders. our customers, we market it within our stores and tell customers will we are doing, once a year we do a prosthetic campaign where they donate their change to this process and we gathered $5 million last year from pennies and nickels and dimes left from people's change and our customers there for are somehow connected to it and if we market to it on line and we receive hundreds and hundreds of letters from our customers' enthusiastic about what the

whole planet foundation is doing. team members participate partly through payroll reduction if they wish and we have a volunteer program were team members can volunteer in some of these countries where we are doing macro credit loans in and that is a transforming experience for many of them. i would say there's nothing our company has ever done that has raise the morale higher than the whole planet foundation. people are proud of what we have done. in eight years we already helped over a million people, ninety-three% of those were women, to have better lives. our suppliers also able to be participating in that. they contribute money to the whole planet foundation and we advertise, market that in our stores as a supplier alliance so that gives them greater exposure to our customer base so that is a win for our suppliers. is it good for our investors?

absolutely. we have received tens of millions of dollars of positive publicity and good will in our communities, it helpful foods markets brand to be better known and better established throughout the world and as a result the investor's gain as well so all the stakeholders are winning, that is a win/win/win strategy. >> someone might ask if hold foods isn't unique in that situation. when you talk about purpose there's a certain -- you may out in the book and something you have in your stores put your goal is to give people choices for healthier eating. so there's a certain almost -- that mean this -- missionary zeal to the idea of your company. and other companies do this? for instance if you are the world's largest creator of washing machine parts can you really have a higher purpose as it were and orient your company

around these big ideas the way wholefoods can? >> my first point to that is chris retailing is about as mundane business as you can get so the fact the we have been able to find a higher purpose, if a grocer confined higher purpose anybody can, i use the example of washing machine parts is >> just came to mind. >> think about what watching machines do and how they have liberated mostly women from drudgery, washing clothes in rivers and streams and beating against rocks are watching sinks by hand, time consuming and not the best use of people's attention and time so washing machines have been a great technological advance for humanity and if you are making parts for that your higher purpose, you want to create the

very best washing machines or most affordable washing machines that can reach the widest market possible. you are contributing to the advancement of humanity and i think you should see it that way and market it that way. you can always find exceptional cases where somebody is doing a product that is deeply harmful for people. i am not saying this is applicable to absolutely every business that exists. just applicable to more than 99% of them. >> let's talk about what this is not. some people will look to the title of this and if they haven't read it, their first daughter is going to be this is an explanation or a case for corporate social responsibility and you are very clear in the book that that is not what this is about and corporate social responsibility, this movement you see, often activist, using pension funds or shares in

companies, using proxies' to get companies to change their policies, often environmental policies or labor policies and away the activist groups think are the socially responsible thing to do. what is different between that movement and what you are advocating? >> -- >> you talk about how companies do what they think is right. that is part of the argument. >> most people who hear about this, people don't like to create new categories in their mind. we are have a category called corporate social responsibility says a think this is just another version of that and it is not. it is another way -- whole new paradigm for thinking about business that does not fit within that little box. early on in the book we differentiate cost capitalism from corporate social responsibility and the biggest difference is corporate social responsibility is really just the traditional business profits

center model that grabs on some type of social responsibility because they think it is going to appease the critics. corporate social responsibility is almost a report through public relations for marketing, seen as a way to improve their brand reputation of the company. so often times accused of green watching you are just doing this for reputation purposes. it is not really -- just very often, not really deep. conscious capitalism makes the community, stakeholder and -- t major stakeholders in the organization, you're trying to great value. it is part of why you exist, part of your higher purpose, part of your mission to do those things so these are not grafted at ons to try to make you look better. they are at the essence of who

you are. talk about a conscious business where they're socially responsible or not is almost as silly question. of course they're socially responsible. inherently they're creating value for customers and employees and 6 suppliers and investors and almost without exception consciously trying to create value for the community they are part of. even if they don't try to consciously create value for their communities the fact that they're creating value for customers, employees and suppliers and investors is already inherently socially responsible. business doesn't have to redeem itself as if it is bad or evil or ethically neutral and to it through good works to redeem itself. business is inherently good if it is creating value for stakeholders. we think you can go a little beyond that and consciously

create value for communities as part of what your purpose and mission is. >> talk about how business is inherently good and one of the purposes of the spokane it is an interesting book because it is partly a story of whole foods and partly an explanation of your philosophy and partly a how to died for some companies that might want to try this but talking about business being inherently good you do mention in the book fact that this is more necessary than ever because business has gotten a bad rap in particular in recent years especially after the 2008 financial crisis. one of your points is business could do a great deal to help itself that it were acting more in a way like this and setting an example. i am curious what you think the role of ceos in talking about capitalism and defending capitalism is. do they have a roll? talk about the role of government and how it works

against government, ceos have a role in talking about and defending capitalism and explaining it to people or is this something you do by example? >> i think the we do. the most disturbing statistic for me is for the longest period of time in the history of the united states, we started out really poor, we were back water in the united states and as we embrace capitalism in the united states, we have tens of millions of immigrants come over to create a better life because they had more freedom, freedom to enterprise, they had the freedom to start businesses and for the longest time, well over 100 years the united states was the freest nation in the world in terms of economic freedom, the most capitalistic nation in the world without exception. in as short a period of time as

2000 the united states still ranked no. 3 on the economic freedom index behind hong kong and singapore. we weren't number one but we were still no. 3 against pretty dynamic economies in hong kong and singapore. over the last 13 years, number 18. when people ask what is wrong with the economy, and disposable income on per-capita basis why is that declining, and we are economically free today less than 13 years ago and as our economic freedom declines, more regulations increase, taxes increase, the engine that is the basis for our prosperity which is business is lessened and our

prosperity is declining as well. economic freedom goes down, so does prosperity. if the capitalist, the business people aren't willing to speak up for free enterprise capitalism we can expect economic freedom to continue to lessen and american prosperity to lessen as well. we are far from being in a free enterprise capitalism system, we have got big government, big business often times colluding with each other, the fiscal cliff bill that just passed, beneath -- payoffs for politically well-connected organizations such as hollywood, alternative energy, and special deals being cut and we are moving away from a system where people think it is fair and this is a system where you can --

people think the way to get ahead is the politically well-connected. >> as government intrusion also good in the way of this type of philosophy of conscious capitalism, the need for business to be holistic, to be thinking, hitting quarterly targets, bigger executives and how they roll out over a longer time pull rise in, and it is nice that john mackey says that but the reality is sec rules make it so hard for us to have transparent discussions with our investors and actually say what we are thinking and waiting in the wings of trial lawyers, every time we don't hear our numbers recorder, the argument is a lot of cultural aspects,

worked against drinking this way. >> a couple responses to that. why do we have such regulations, why are they growing so much. they are growing because in the sense, people don't trust business any longer. we no longer have widespread consensus that business is good as i mentioned previously with a 19% approval rating, business is not seen as trustworthy in our society and i remember seeing a documentary called corp. a few years ago which portrayed business and corporations as a bunch of sociopaths, they are only looking out for themselves and the bottom line and that is how many people see corporations in the world day. so we have allowed government to increase to such a large scale, the people have, society has because we want government to

protect us from the sociopaths so as long as you see corporations as primarily sociopathic, the rationale for government to protect us from that sociopath is pretty compelling. business itself has got to discover its higher purpose and act in a different way and improve that overall rating to get it up to 90% rating and then the press for regulations to control laws and protect us from the sociopath will listen because it will be self regulating and self policing so i sort of blame business for falling under the influence of the critics and beginning to act in ways that detrimental to their long-term best interests. >> do you really think as someone who lives in washington and writes about politics do you think of 100% of businesses were today part of a conscious capitalist movement that this president wouldn't have introduced the health care bill and regulation? >> i doubt this president would

have been elected. >> interesting thought. in terms of impediments to doing something like this, you have thought deeply about this for a long time and whole foods has had elements of your philosophy from the beginning of its creation and. what do you say to companies who would say if i were starting out fabulous, i would love to do something like this but there is simply no way in my business right now with the unions i have in my business, with contract i have in my business, with the regulations i have on my business to reorient myself, shane my purpose and the line my stakeholders? how do you do that? >> there is no question is easier to start a conscious business than it is to transition to one if you have a long legacy, strong culture that

is antithetical to it will -- visionary ceo and visionary leadership to make the transition. it is my opinion that conscious companies are going to dominate the 20 first century landscape for one simple reason, it works a lot better because it is definitely better and it wins in the marketplace. we need more research to prove the point but we started where we talked about how these conscious businesses have outperformed the indices' not by a little bit but by a lot. over the last 15 years a conscious public companies we identified in the s&p 500 by ken x or 15, that is a phenomenal track record. >> do they outperform an oil company? >> oil companies can be conscious as well.

oil is one of the key energies that allowed humanity to get lifted out of the dirt. there is nothing inherently bad or evil about an oil company. they need to take their environmental concerns very seriously. they can create value for their customers or employees or suppliers and have a higher purpose so there is nothing that disqualifies them as being a conscious business. what happens in capitalism is whatever works better ultimately wins in the marketplace and honestly if this doesn't work better it doesn't matter whether it sounds good or not. it won't spread, it won't triumph in the marketplace but what we are seeing is this type of philosophy is going to triumph in the marketplace so companies will begin to transition to a more conscious way of the more they will fail, they will become dinosaurs and go out of business and young entrepreneur accompanies will be the ones to take the place. many companies we most admire

for example now didn't exist 15, 20 years ago, or 30 or 40 years ago. these companies have changed our lives, google didn't exist 15 years ago, facebook didn't exist ten years ago. the whole internet phenomenon is less than 25 years of age. there was no amazon.com. the legacy companies will have to evolve or they will be out competed in the marketplace. not tomorrow but in ten years we will be in a very different landscape, twenty-first, we would like to revisit this conversation. >> there is the think-tank called consciouscapitalism.com. explain how that works, do ceos belong to? is designed to help people figure out how to do this?

>> it is non-profit. you will get to it. it is the non-profit organization and we have a couple conferences a year. we do one for c e os that is the more sea level conference, more smaller, of the kind of gathering but we will do something in san francisco april 5th and sixth, which we are hoping to get a couple thousand people where we can begin to spread these further now that the book has been launched. we are trying to start a movement. our society is in decline and unless we reverse it and began to rediscover our higher purpose as companies and businesses and think about the greater good of all the stakeholders the decline is going to continue. we will see more government intrusion and be less and less a free society. i love our country and i feel i want to do all i can do to reverse that. >> i have to ask, you mentioned

this in the book, a lot of this, you talk about not just a lining stakeholders' but conscious leadership and conscious culture to give them the company and a lot was very uplifting, talked about ceos needing to have more integrity and trust, transparency. the need for love in the workplace and feel inspired. i have to ask, a lot of people will wonder how that measures with one of the things they may know you for for this event awhile ago where the fcc was looking into you because you were posting yahoo! against a competitor under anonymous names, political comments about a competitor. some people might say how do you write about all of those things and reconcile it with that event? you bring it up in the book, i do want to ask about it now.

>> i may be the only person in the world who doesn't see this as a contradiction. i don't see it as this big deal. the media sensationalize what happened because i was under investigation. which was dropped. i wasn't able to defend myself, couldn't do interviews or post on my blog or do videos. i had to be made silent. whole thing was sensationalized. i get asked that question all the time so that we respond to it. what i said over a eight year period, follow the public record. anybody can still go on to yahoo! do a search and you concede -- i am not ashamed of what i wrote. i am proud of what i wrote. i wrote intelligent, thoughtful postings there and the anonymous thing is blown out of proportion

because people are not familiar with how financial bulletin boards work. a good metaphor is when you go to masquerade party at halloween you are in costume and so is anybody else. i you trying to pretend you are not kim strassel? obviously not. that is the custom of a party. you are in costume and so is everyone else. on a financial bulletin board you post, take the screen name on, everyone does. people don't post under their, quote, real names, not trying to deceive anyone. it is like a masquerade party, you are posting as an anonymous person which is a good thing. that allows the power of the ideas to triumph. in terms of running down a competitor over a eight year period, 1400 posts, i probably had a dozen that were critical of wild goats.

those were ripped out of context, repeated over and over again. i criticize whole foods from time to time as well and for me it is hard for people to understand but i was actually it was a form of play. i had no by at -- diabolical mode of where i was trying to drive the stock price down as if anyone could affect markets, nobody paid any attention. how many people actually read those posts? it was a community of a few hundred people at most. we were just debating because i like to argue. i'm like to debate, the repartee of ideas. i defendable foods and occasionally criticized while loads but not as a smear that i was trying to drive down the stock price, that is such nonsense because i hadn't posted on the bulletin board for eight months prior to beginning negotiations and secondly because an anonymous poster

doesn't affect markets. never heard anybody's stock price, nor did i intend that. i was having fun. i am a very playful guy. i enjoyed that debate about the subject that i am most passionate about witches whole foods market. most of my postings were about whole foods. usually defending the company against those telling lies about the company and i would go in and take my sword of truth within what i could disclose as a public company and defend whole foods from the record. i am glad i did. in hindsight if i had known anybody was going to care about that i wouldn't have done it. i learned a valuable lesson but i'm not embarrassed or ashamed about what i actually said. i challenge the viewer to actually go read what i wrote. >> let's debate a little bit about this bigger idea because there is no question there is going to be a debate, since 2008 you actually have a lot of

different ideas coming out about how business should restore itself. you are not alone in this, different talks about different forms of company, the triple bottom line, benefit corporations, all these ideas how to improve capitalism. the classical economists say it doesn't need to be improved, it works the way it is. the mention in the book, you had a fascinating debate back in 2005 with milton friedman of all people and i advocate everyone reading it. incredibly thought the exchange. i am not milton friedman. he made a point, he would make the point that capitalism when it is oriented the great beauty of capitalism when it is oriented around profit maximization, everybody in fact

does win. if you are a company and you're doing your job the right way, customers and getting great products and willing to pay you for some, your suppliers are getting their products sold, your investors are making a return on their money, your employees are happy because your business is growing and there is opportunity for the advancement and greater pay. what is also wonderful is it is one idea around which everyone can unite and agree and of course there are all the side benefits which you mentioned in the book that go to society, centralized, everyone is allowed to use the money they made from this venture to improve society as a hole through their own different decisions and you get better literacy and better health than less poverty. the argument classical economists make about what you are saying is if your argument is business need to do what is right, what you think is right may be very different from what i think is right.

you have injected this whole aspect of judgments and all these questions in to this that get away from the simplicity of profit maximization and could get in the way of it. what is the response to that? >> i have a number of responses. the paradigm you just articulated has held sway for decades and business's reputation is 19% and not seen as fundamentally good, it is seen as a greedy and selfish and exploit data and only caring about money. my first response is simply from a marketing standpoint if you want to promote capitalism you're going about it with a bad strategy. you are not winning the argument, you are losing the argument, you are playing into the hands of the enemies and critics, you are reinforcing what they believe that all you care about is money. you don't care about anything else. that is my first response.

my second response is the profits of paradox and the use an analogy to explain it which is happiness. if you want to be happy in life and most people do what i have discovered as i have gotten older and more mature is the worst strategy to achieve happiness in life is to make that your primary goal. if you make happiness when you are striving for you will not probably achieve it. instead you will end up being narcissistic, still involved, caring about your own pleasures and your own satisfactions in life as your paramount goal. i found happiness is best thought of as a byproduct of other things. byproduct of meaningful work and family and friends and good health and love and care. we get happiness not by aiming directly for it but by throwing

ourselves into a project involving ourselves and fundamentally trying to have integrity and be a good person and if we do those things happiness will be one of the things that comes as a result of that. i never aimed for happiness that i am very happy person. as come as a byproduct of the other things. profits are pretty similar. if you make some your primary goal you said it aligns the stakeholders' but it doesn't. it does the opposite. if people think you are in it for just your own self-interest and shareholders are in it for their own self-interest there's no higher purpose that unites the stakeholders when is to keep everybody from taking their own short-term interests into play? customers are going to look for what is best for them and only what is best for them. they don't care about the organization, they don't care about your store. it is in their interest to shoplift and get away with it why wouldn't they do that? if your employees, why should they work hard? if it is in the short-term

self-interest to shirk, if they're looking out for their own profit, everyone is just looking out for their own profit then you are not going to have these solidarity, the alignment you are talking about. instead, the system will sub optimize itself because everyone is simply looking out for their own personal profits. instead what will unite people is a more transcendent purpose that aligns different stakeholders' around at and of course they're still self interested but not exclusively. you cannot create the good society and failed miserably to create it on the basis of your personal self-interest. we are so interested if it were a lot more complex than that. we also love, we also care, we are idealistic, we follow transcendent values and that leads to society and happiness to go ahead and go after the good, the true, the beautiful,

and metabolizing those higher values and your business will flourish at the same time. you can't get there by putting the cart before the horse. when you think profits, the thing that unites all you will suboptimal eyes and i would love to compete against businesses that are thinking that way. >> milton friedman did say in that debate actually john mackey agree on 95% of that. but he says it more quickly than i do. he makes it sound nicer than i do. his argument in that debate was of course the company wants its business employees to be happy and of course the company wants higher purpose but the reason for doing all those things is because when you do then you make more profit. >> that is the investor's perspective but from the perspective of the other stakeholders they see it differently. >> host: this isn't just

marketing. >> guest: it is not just a marketing. milton friedman was talking about -- part of my response, i might have said something in that debate with him, then say it. if you say it is about creating value for other stakeholders then say that too. don't just say it is strictly creating -- misunderstanding and attacks and play into the enemy's arms. business is the greatest value creator in the history of the world. capitalism is the greatest form of social cooperation ever. let's tell that story. let's tell the story about all the value we create, not just for the investors but other stakeholders as well. it is partly better branding and marketing but also is a revolution in the way we think about it. we start thinking about the good

of all stakeholders and not just our own personal good were the good of the investors bought more robust and bigger picture about what business is all about. , it can create value for investors as well. you shouldn't some optimize, and the way we're putting this is a better way to create more value for investors. you are going to suboptimal eyes. >> host: are there necessary trade-offs to this? we talked about this. wholefoods's higher purpose, we talk about what this is as far as you or your self, separately from local foods mission, you made a point and a lot of people have the livestock grazing around the world takes a toll on the environment and yet you

still meet in a whole food stores. when we talk about this some people would say as people say here is john mackey talking about doing the right thing and this is a whole foods greater mission and on the other side he is chasing profit. how do you put those two things together? >> perfection is not one of the options we have. i don't think so much of trade-offs often times, look for trade off and find trade-offs. that is the way the analytical mind works. it tries to find the trade offs. i always say when you find tradeoffs in business it is the failure of imagination, failure of creativity, hasn't found that win/win strategy. the example, the reality of the fact that we are in business to serve our customers and our customers vote when they come

into our stores and not so much that we are chasing profit but create value for our customers and decide what is valuable to them. we have a responsibility to educate them, to influence them to make different shoelaces. we in businesses serve them and there's of value to them. i wouldn't want to live in a society where experts are making their decisions for everybody, good for everybody else. i don't like the way the society is drifting, people are responsible for themselves and accountable for their own choices but they should have the freedom to make their own choices and business ultimately serves its customers and if you ever forget that you will fail in business. that being said, hole food got started, we sell 5% of total sales and in organic foods, now 30 years later we are close to

50%. that is through educating the customer base over a 35 year period. we are trying to educate customers about healthy diet and healthy eating and it is not easy, people deal with food addictions not just that they can shift overnight. it educated people, and they stopped buying it. we are in businesses serve them. >> you talked about food addiction. and talk eloquently about you are talking about capitalism. voluntary exchange. and the company that provides it. and later in the book you are very critical of some companies,

and they exist to provide products that are unhealthy. and they talk about tobacco companies and junk food companies, something you care deeply about, an aspect of your life is making sure people are trying to encourage people to eat more helpfully and to that degree, and the problem which i would like you to explain is it is in the eye of the beholder. i could go out and find environmental activists are not right because they produce a product that police the environment. and nickelodeon should be shut down because they don't like the programming or five ardent feminists who think mattel's should be gotten rid of. >> you can eliminate everything.

>> haven't we undermine the idea of voluntary exchange? >> we don't suggest in the book that tobacco companies should be made illegal or junk food companies should be forbidden to trade. is based on voluntary exchange and ultimately business is there to satisfy the needs and desires of its customer base. fast-food companies for example have served historically useful purpose. their products have obviously been over indulged in, but when you look at it historically they provide convenience, consistency, and affordability for many people, where those are things people prefer. the challenge, a fast-food company is how would we provide

affordability, convenience and quality and consistency while upbraiding and educating our customers rejoices that were healthier for them. and a fast-food company could begin to nudge its customer base, not command them to do so but could help over time raise consciousness. in the sense you have a responsibility to do so. the tobacco industry is a tougher case. >> can it be a conscious company? >> they could. if you look historically the way tobacco was thought about for along time, tobacco was something that cold people and help from concentrate and relax. the challenge for tobacco companies is is there a way to evolve their products overtime to keep the good qualities that people seek out when they use the product without the damaging

impact, maybe that is not possible, but that is what they could be aspiring to. that being said, again, people have the right to smoke if they wish to, i am not urging that tobacco be outlawed or we going to prohibition of tobacco use which would turn a huge percentage of of the population to criminals and a lot of negative things prohibition causes in terms of the criminalization of society and is a bad idea. you can see i am somebody who believes in voluntary exchange and people making choices but at the same time attempting to raise consciousness and educate people to make better choices for their own health and well-being. >> host: you are a c e o so you spend a lot of time doing things that all of your whole foods stores, what was it like to write a book? what was the process? did you sit in bed at night with your laptop in the snacks or devote time in your day? >> guest: i ate fast food when

nobody was looking. >> host: smoked cigarettes. >> guest: i was a really bad boy. i learned how to write a book. my co-author, this was his seventh book. i am excited because i think i got three more books in me and i am already plotting them out. the first thing was he taught me, we did a technology called my mapping. we were able to take the ideas we wanted to get put forward in the book and organize them in a brainstorming fashion through software, get it on your computer, that helped disorganize the overall book, we could add to nor subtract as we move along. that was the big picture for the book and then when it came to doing the chapters we use dictations software, dragon dictation hook up to our computers and i would look at the my map and basically talk

through the chapters. >> you talked to the book. >> guest: the initial rough draft was a revival the spoken. then you don't have writers block. you have 5,000 words down in a chapter very quickly and you feel good about it. then you have to go do research, obviously at it and polish it. the other person comes in, it was written by both of us. >> host: is a mostly your voice or his voice? >> guest: we decided for to mostly be my voice but he did more work on this book than i did and he has a higher standard of what is acceptable as a writer than i am. we were a great team. i enjoyed working with him. the next book or two we will team up to do those as well. >> host: thank you for taking time to do this and it was great to see you. >> guest: thanks so much.

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