John Mackey Blog Post (Mackey does know Spiral Dynamics)

[Cocolove]

I am listened to about an hour of the podcast with joe rogan, and about 53 minutes in, in very clear yet not explicit terms, Mackey describes spiral dynamics. I was curious about this because mackey gave a 2006 speech about spiral dynamics. It is apparently also present in his new book. He clearly thinks he is describing yellow capitalism and criticizing green socialism from above. 

https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/tips-and-ideas/archive/upward-flow-human-c2-a0development

I was really shocked by Mackeys positions on Rogan, and am glad to see Leo's response. Nevertheless, I think Leo missed something when he said that Mackey doesn't understand human development. He has been working with spiral dynamics for a long time, from 2006 to 2020, as we can see. 

[RendHeaven]

Orange alllllways thinks himself Yellow

[Leo Gura]

Mackey knows SD apparently, but he's still so baised about capitalism.

Economically he's neoliberal.

Again, his job depends on him not understanding the problems with capitalism.

[Girzo]

When you look at the conscious capitalism it is indeed a stage Yellow idea. Taking care of all the stakeholders, instead of just shareholders. Focusing on culture and evolutionary purpose.

But I am bamboozled by Mackey treatment of what Amazon is doing as conscious capitalism. That is not conscious, that is vanilla capitalism.

It looks like empty words, if it doesn't promote systemic change.

I think what B Corporations are doing is worth more attention than this conscious capitalism thingy.

[DocWatts]

16 minutes ago, Girzo said:

When you look at the conscious capitalism it is indeed a stage Yellow idea. Taking care of all the stakeholders, instead of just shareholders. Focusing on culture and evolutionary purpose.

But I am bamboozled by Mackey treatment of what Amazon is doing as conscious capitalism. That is not conscious, that is vanilla capitalism.

It looks like empty words, if it doesn't promote systemic change.

I think what B Corporations are doing is worth more attention than this conscious capitalism thingy.

John Mackey is a good example of why having broad knowledge of a model and internalizing what it has to teach are two very different things. While it would be one thing if he were to just own the fact that his worldview is at (relatively Healthy) Orange, trying to frame ethical Corporate behavior as a matter of Libertarian volunteerism without any sort of enforcement mechanism isn't fooling anyone further up the Spiral. It's clear he lacks the ego-awareness to see the self-serving nature of his arguments.

That said, if Orange is going to be the dominant force in the World, I'd much rather it be a relatively Healthy Orange which believes that acting in at least somewhat socially responsible ways can be in its self interest. Don't forget how much worse than John Mackey corporations at Orange can be.

[Cocolove]

@Leo Gura  And yours depends on you giving us accurate insights into the nature of capitalism. Yay!

@Girzo Exactly.

 

I remember reading Memenomics and how Said Dawlabani praised whole foods as a yellow corporation. It fit his model of conscious yellow politics. Interesting. I might reread those sections in light of Mackey's position on Joe Rogan. I wonder if there's any contradiction in there.

 

[DocWatts]

@Cocolove Vaush said it better than I could so I'll just paraphrase the way he put it, but the idea that someone can call themselves a Conscious Capitalist, while at the same time suppressing his employees' legally protected Right to Unionize, makes that claim laughable.