UPDATE – links added.

As often happens here, the issue I wanted to discuss has been all but lost from sight by issues my readers would rather discuss.  My argument as to why from a PAGAN perspective one
should boycott Whole Foods has disappeared in the outpouring of compassion for
John Mackey.  (I will bide my time and bring up the Pagan issues in a future post.  Maybe over salmon farms.) 

Let me touch on the major issues raised in this respect: What happens to innocent employees injured by a boycott?  What about
freedom of speech and toleration? and Didn’t Mackey actually try to offer
constructive suggestions?  These are not strictly Pagan issues, but they are important issues for many readers, and I am not just a Pagan. 

I’ll start with the first because it  helps us see a serious problem with modern society.

Do we injure other innocent people if we boycott?  Yes. We do.  Did we injure innocent Germans and Japanese during World War
Two?  Yes we did.  As a matter of fact, we killed many of
them and maimed others.  Ditto on
our most current military adventures in Afghanistan.

I go back as far as WWII to avoid the issue of whether we
should have fought.  I am assuming
in that case the answer is “yes.” 
I consider the Afghan adventure initially justified and incompetently
conducted, like almost everything else the Bush administration did.  But the most relevant point is that we are killing and maiming innocents
right now.  The problem in the WWII
case (as well as Afghanistan under the Taliban) was that there was no clear way
to hold those responsible to account without adversely affecting others.

The problem is the same in the Mackey case, with two big
differences.  First, in boycotting
we don’t kill or maim anybody. 
Second, I have not said Whole Foods should go out of business, I have
explicitly said Whole Foods should fire Mackey.  As a corporation I assure you Mackey will be fired long
before they go out of business. 
When Mackey is fired all those almost nonexistent people who decided to
patronize Whole Foods because of his editorial will likley cease shopping there and
many of those who stopped shopping will resume.

In addition, and this should be obvious but for some reason is not, when people
ecologically aware enough to shop at Whole Foods shop elsewhere, they will shop
at other organic foods outlets. 
People still eat, you know.

If the boycott is big enough to permanently affect Whole Foods, those places will expand, offering more jobs.  And in all likelihood those places will be run either by people whose values more closely resemble those of their new customers, or who at least do not actively and publicly oppose those values.  

Innocent employees always are hurt when people shift their buying habits.  At the same time, new jobs open up elsewhere.  This is basic economics.  I give a A for compassion and an F for analysis to those who refuse to boycott in order to protect jobs

The alternative to a boycott is to write letters that will
be ignored because they do not affect the bottom line. 

In short, this concern with whoever might lose their job as
a result of the boycott makes much less sense than being concerned for
innocents under American bombs in World War Two or Afghan wedding parties under American drones today.  It is a genuine issue, but cannot be solved under a system
where responsibility is so shielded that it is difficult to hold people
accountable for their views.  Don’t
want war?  Change the system.  Don’t want corporate boycotts?  Change the system.

That brings me to my second response.  No where will you see me having said
Mackey should not have freedom of speech. 
He should.  To bring that
issue up is I think a result of not thinking very clerly about the issue.  I cannot do better than Jonathan
Zasloff’s little essay
over at the Reality Based Community. 
He hits that issue out of the ball park.

Very very briefly (again, read Zasloff) Mackey was not simply
exercising his right to freedom of speech.  That was involved, but not just that.  No one has argued he should not have the right to say what he did in whatever forum he can.  We are not the lunatics who burned Dixie Chicks CDs.

Finally there is the argument that Mackey was proposing
alternative solutions in good fath.  I don’t think so..  Not in any serious
sense.  As should be obvious to
anyone who has lost a job where they were covered, his ‘solution’ is irrelevant
to them.  Yet they need their problems addressed more than
most, especially if they have a “pre-existing condition” that makes it
impossible for them to find insurance outside a pool. Ditto for the
self-employed. 

Mackey’s arguments
once you carefully look at them are not serious ones at all.  Take his “tort reform” argument.  As I understand it, those issues make up less than 1% of
rising costs.  We had tort reform
under Bush – and were promised all sorts of good things that have not
happened.  It is the standard
idiotic right wing talking point when they are challenged to come up with a
altenative.

Then he wants to further deregulate the insurance industry, as if that will make a difference. It will not help.  Here is an excellent example of what the health insurance industry is really like and only a dogmatic libertarian or industry hack could find this moral corruption and the high human costs it leads to excusable.

I will not cover all 8 of his proposals here, Zasloff and others have done so.  But they do not contribute to the debate, they distract from it.  Which was their intent, I think.  For more on Whole Fpoods and Mackey and health, see buzzflash, and Ben Wyksida at Huffingtonpost. 

I am not sure why Mackey did such a stupid thing, but there should be serious consequences.

I am not very tactful because I am tired tired tired of the
lies.

UPDATE.  I have added links.