Why Libertarianism is a Crock

Jonathan Swift couldn’t have thought up a better satire. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market and avowed libertarian, just got caught exploiting imperfect market information and scheming to rip off consumers by building an organic food monopoly. Libertarians claim the market should be left alone to regulate itself, while progressives have long argued that investors need accurate information from companies about their finances and consumers need competition to get the best price. Apparently John Mackey is just the kind of nefarious businessman we need government to regulate.

Brook, like many who attempt to shoot down libertarian ideology, fails to see the big picture and wallows in ignorance.

1. Libertarianism is not an economic philosophy but political and moral one. Economic liberty can be derived from it but is an otherwise separate realm. If you’re going to use labels… you should know what they mean.
2. He paints the corporations as these all powerful entities and the customer as the helpless victim. This is absurd. Corps exists because of customer demand and their willingness to hand over their money.
3. Investors should be held responsible for their investments. If they don’t care to investigate their investments they they invite any abuse which may arise. The company is unable to continue functioning without the investor support. If they are concerned with the actions the company may take they should require all information to be filtered through the investors first or some other check system implemented. This also goes for the customer. If they fear the quality of the products they can not purchase them or demand a 3rd party check. This article is about food. It’s not like we can’t find plenty of competition in that field.
4. Brook says “without government regulation, à la this FTC hearing, consumers and investors don’t have the information they need to make informed choices.” The information was provide in the documents Whole Foods provide to the FTC. If this was actually an issue the investors would have been able to get it prior. If it was something that would have hurt the company it would have been dealt with. It wasn’t an issue and no one cared but those on the Yahoo board. Besides, how/why is it that having information to make informed choices a right? If that were actually true any customer/investor would be able to get access to any piece of information ever. Intellectual property would disappear. Would this also apply to the government? I’d like to be informed of the classified info the government has so I can vote and decide where to live accordingly.
5. I fail to see what the issue is here anyway. Mackey was “caught posting on Yahoo Finance’s bulleting board under a pseudonym pumping up Whole Foods’ stock and blasting its rival Wild Oats Markets.” Sounds like normal word of mouth advertising to me. If anything the investors should be upset because he’s potentially wasting company time chatting on Yahoo when I’d think he’d have better things to do. I doubt some random person posting how great Whole Foods is is going to cause a huge bump in their stock price. This issue with Brook appears to be making such a big deal about has (AFAIK) nothing to do with what the FTC is currently doing. Why really is this news worthy? At worst it gives him and Whole Foods a bad name. Best it’s juvenile and was a waste of time. I can’t imagine that anyone took him serious.
6. Brook has tunnel vision with regard to regulation. He has been raised in a government nanny society and they are always the first to be named as to the thing which should regulate X. Who needs personal responsibility when you have Big Brother looking out for everyone? Why attempt to eradicate ignorance when it’s so much easier to stay in your well constructed bubble? Do people like this really believe the public to be so lazy, helpless, ignorant, or possibly stupid? That they can’t or shouldn’t have to actively investigate and inform themselves before making financial decisions? The demand, the customers are more then able to regulate the supply.  Treating them otherwise is to treat them like children or invalids.

What do you really expect? It’s the Huffington Post. HuffPo is a left publication and Brook and friends will do and say whatever (including blatent misrepresentation of beliefs and ideas) to discredit those who champion freedom and liberty and equal opportunity… not equal outcome. I’d like to see Brook write something about Ron Paul.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 5:35 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.