
John Mackey and Whole Foods - kqr2
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all
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NathanKP
As a local Austin resident I can say that here we feel that Whole Foods is a
little expensive. It is kind of a ritzy store for higher income people. At the
same time it is a trendy place to work, and applying for a job at Whole Foods
means a six month to year wait. Also the other major Austin food store, HEB,
is the exact opposite. Most of the HEB stores are aimed at the low income
demographic and it is impossible to find anything but the most generic of
brands in them. So Whole Foods provides the "luxury" foods as well as organic
foods.

I don't think anyone here in Austin feels that Whole Foods is "evil".

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lsb
What do Austin residents think of Central Market, vs Whole Foods?

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NathanKP
Central Market is cheaper, but it doesn't have the same atmosphere. I tend to
go to Central Market more often because its closer than Whole Foods and
because they have great live music on the weekends.

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camccann
On one hand, this guy is a classic example of why sometimes it's best to stay
out of the way and let a professional be the public face of a company.

On the other hand, he may be a loose cannon, but at least he's _interesting_ ,
and you have to give him credit for what he's accomplished, even if he has had
some pretty impressive gaffes along the way.

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mattmcegg
Cliffs notes: Eccentric Whole Foods CEO is a Ron Paul revolutionist while his
shoppers are "yuppie gastronomes and fussy label-readers" and they're pissed
he's pro-free market healthcare. Meanwhile, he defends "conscious capitalism"
and looks to expand his 1% market share.

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DaniFong
As an aside, the USA doesn't have anything like free market healthcare. Tax
laws have given such an upper hand to health insurance companies, patent laws
have given a huge upper hand to big pharma (particularly 'use patents', e.g.
patenting a pink Prozac for PMS), and malpractice lawyers have doctors on the
defensive.

Now, doctors are likely to do something just to keep from being sued, pharma
companies are free to charge whatever they want to certain classes of patients
relying upon or otherwise using a particular drug (their preferred patient is
one who will depend for life on a drug that they have the sole treatment for,)
all of them have a huge information asymmetry advantage giving them even more
monopolistic pricing power, and patients are often left in the dark, with
close to no ability to reason about crucial and extremely expensive decisions
(do you know what will be covered in your health insurance plan? Do you know
what something will cost before you get the medical bill?)

Plastic surgery might be one of the sectors most akin to a free market, since
it's typically elective (save for reconstructive surgery) and hence insurance
companies have less of a say. But still.

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The existence of a free market is an astonishing myth to be held so commonly.
I exhort you to take a close look at a few business sectors, to see where the
wealth and power is distributed. How many cities have more than one daily
newspaper? In many sectors the advantages of scale are so great that it leads
incontrovertibly to a few big players. The power of scale in certain
industries is so great that in GE under Jack Welch, they were #1 or #2 in
their sector, or they were out. And as soon as there's a monopoly, or an
oligopoly, the tendency is to build this huge moat around their business,
using whatever means available, and that freezes this supposedly free market
even more.

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mhb
Other good examples of how the customer benefits when there is more of a free
market are orthodontics and laser eye surgery.

