Goodspeak Only, Please

After John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, ignited an outcry by proposing ideas for reforming health insurance that (unsurprisingly) didn't exactly appeal to Whole Foods' primary customer base, a lively debate has been raging. Part of this debate trumpets the idea that CEOs should keep their non-populist opinions to themselves.

"Corporate executives have a lot of social and political power in the United States, in a way that goes above and beyond the social and political power that stems directly from their wealth. The opinions of businessmen on political issues are taken very seriously by the press and by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Once upon a time perhaps union leaders exercised the same kind of sway, but these days all Republicans, most of the media, and some Democrats feel comfortable writing labor off as just an “interest group” while Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Jack Welch are treated as all-purpose sages. One could easily imagine a world in which CEOs were reluctant to play the role of freelance political pundit out of fear of alienating their customer base. And it seems to me that that might very well be a nice world to live in."
Matthew Yglesias

This may very well be true. But, from where I stand, I think that one could just as easily imagine a world in which CEOs didn't bother to play the role of freelance political pundit because we didn't give their opinions any more weight than any other random person we didn't know and presumably, didn't know very much about us. This, it seems to me, would be an even better world to live in.

In the end, this is my main disagreement with many self-styled liberals and progressives - their opinion that the common person is simply incapable (rather than unmotivated or unincentivized) to act in what they understand their own best interests to be. CEOs like Buffet, Gates, Welch and Mackey need to be muzzled by activist citizens because the non-activist citizens just can't be expected to take the opinions of such luminaries with a grain of salt, or understand that their proclamations may be self-serving, rather than recipes for sweeping social improvement. This assumption of constituent passivity among the greater masses leads to the quite logical conclusion that the world needs to be made safe for passivity - which, in turn, provides an incentive for that same passivity - after all, understanding exactly why what's good for Jack Welch may not be good for me takes time and effort than I could otherwise spend doing other, more desirable activities. So if people who, if I listened to them, might lead me astray are made to shut up, I don't have to put the time into evaluating the wisdom (or applicability) of their statements vis-a-vis my own position. Knowing that everyone who is allowed to speak is on my side, all I have to do to lead a happy, healthy life is listen and obey, rather than do the intellectual heavy lifting that critical thinking demands.

That's double-plus good all around.