Wholefoods, one of the
most consciously ethical companies in the world, was picketed by animal rights
activists in 2003. At first, CEO John Mackey was incensed. After all,
Wholefoods are the good guys! Couldn't these would-be revolutionaries take
their complaints to McDonalds or Walmart?
After some reflection
Mackey, the libertarian author of Conscious Capitalism (2013),
decided that it might not be a bad idea to sit down with the activists and hear
what they had to say. Asking them, “Why did you attack us?” he received the
rather touching response: “Because we thought you would listen. Nobody else
will.”
As a consequence,
Wholefoods made the decision to undertake a long and wide-ranging ethical
review of how they sourced their meat. In meetings spanning months, they
consulted experts in farming, sustainability, animal welfare, economics and
lord knows who else. They brought ranchers together with animal rights
activists and scientists and worked collectively on establishing objective
standards to measure animal welfare. Ultimately, they were able to
significantly improve the living standards of the animals they sell. Mackay
himself was motivated by what he learned to go vegan.
Mackey is extremely
keen to rehabilitate the image that capitalism has, especially among young
people who tend to perceive the market economy as cutthroat, exploitative and
alienating. He believes the perception that businesses as driven entirely by
the “selfish” profit motive is partly responsible for capitalism’s poor
standing. He is eager to help people understand that business enriches lives,
and fears that unless we rehabilitate the image of capitalism, we may soon slay
the goose that lays the golden eggs. After all, free markets have created
unprecedented leaps in living standards since the industrial revolution.
I agree with Mackie
that business is
about creating value for others rather than cutthroat competition. I
think most people go into business because they have an idea for a product or
service which they think is cool and that people would benefit from, and
fantasize about making large sums of money helping people – rather
than exploiting them.
Mackey’s vision, and
the story of Wholefood's ethical reforms is awe-inspiring in a way, and
certainly demonstrates what big business can achieve in serving a higher
purpose that speaks to the values of consumers. After all, a man does not live
by organic, wholegrain, einkorn bread alone!
However, in the
interests of rigor, I would like to open a discussion about whether this kind
of “ethical” or “conscious” capitalism is really the most effective way for
companies to “do good” in the world.
I confess I have not
been able to reach an answer yet.
On one hand, the
standards that Wholefoods have created for measuring the welfare standards of
animal rearing will help all consumers and businesses who want to make ethical
choices and minimize the suffering of the animals which they buy and sell.
On the other hand,
everything comes at an opportunity cost.
The book Doing
Good Better (2015) demonstrates that if you want to donate money to charity
then making a choice based upon the best data will make a tremendous
difference, because the best charities are literally thousands of times
more efficient at allocating resources than the least efficient ones. (Happily,
the entire
audiobook is available free of charge on YouTube.)
The book was written
by William MacAskill, professor at The University of Oxford. MacAskill is one
of the pioneers of Effective Altruism, a philosophical movement seeking
to bring empirical evidence to people on how to best have a positive impact in
the world, be it by their choice of where to donate and spend their money, what
career to pick, or where to volunteer their spare time.
Some of the
fascinating conclusions MacAskill’s book presents are counterintuitive, and may
even infuriate many a would-be conscious-consumer, for example:
1) If you want to
reduce your carbon footprint, a donation of $110 a year to the most efficient
carbon-offsetting company will help more than giving up your car, turning off
all your lights, and taking a train instead of a plane. In fact, it will make
you carbon negative, which not even giving up electricity in your house will
do!
2) If you want to
reduce the suffering of animals you better achieve that by donating to an
efficient pressure group than by going vegetarian. (MacAskill is nonetheless a
vegetarian.)
3) If you want to help
the world's most impoverished people, buying fair trade products is not the way
to do it. If you take the difference between the cost of the cheaper
non-fair-trade product and the fair-trade product and donate it to one of the
most effective poverty charities, your money will do hundreds or even thousands
of times as much good per penny.
To summarize the key
insight here: most well-intentioned people will assume that the best way to
make a positive impact in the world is to make better consumption choices, but
usually, donating a relatively small amount of money to an organization that
knows how to spend it efficiently will often have a far greater impact then
buying a product with ethical credentials or abstaining from the luxuries of
civilization.
This is similar to how
critics of capitalism tend to think that taxing the rich and giving it to the
poor is the best way to alleviate poverty, when actually this creates a trade
off in capital investment, which drives all
the technology and innovations that increase living standards.
It is well known that
our brains wired to respond to stories rather than statistics. For example,
people are more likely to donate to a cause advertised by the moving story of
one little girl and her tragic disaster than the details of thousands in dire
straits, even if the second cause is more urgent and would allow fewer
resources to go farther.
If the defence of
capitalism is what we seek, then perhaps it will prove to be more important
that businesses are seen to be doing good than the measure of how much good
they are actually doing. It certainly seems to be important enough for many
consumers to pay more for products or round up the cost of their purchases to
donate to whatever inefficient charity has been selected by the owner of the
kiosk they are shopping at.
As we know, shopping
at Wholefoods is expensive. The question for the conscious consumer is whether
they are doing better for the world by shopping there to support their policy
of ethical meat sourcing, or if they’d have more impact by grabbing cheap
animal products in a budget store and donating the difference to the right
cause. (My writing on this matter, may strike some as somewhat ironic, as I, mystelf, am
known by some in the libertarian community for being an ethical vegetarian.)
A more profound query
still might be to ask whether Wholefoods would have reduced more animal
suffering by investing in the best evidence-based causes than holding expensive
consultations with environmentalists and agriculturalists.
The Whole Planet
Foundation, which has alleviated poverty by issuing microcredit loans, is a
credit to the world. The question is whether this is a case where the conspicuous
benefit is seen, while what is unseen is that the same amount of resources
allocated to the most efficient already existing organizations would have done
far more good.
I don’t know how we
would get the evidence to answer these questions, but there is someone out
there who does. (Perhaps we could consult William MacAskill.)
I do not mean to be
cynical. This is not an attempt to condemn Wholefoods, or the great John Mackey
for their attempts to do good by consumers, animals, and the capitalist system.
What Wholefoods have done is revolutionary, and I am happy that there is
somewhere where people know for certain that they can get meat that is reared
humanely.
But for us nit-pickers
– obsessed with hard facts, efficiency and clear answers – the question will
remain, what is the ideal libertarian strategy for is doing good in the world?
It is not a trivial
question either. The welfare – and even lives – of real people depend upon the
answer.