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Action Plan Winning the Battle for Freedom and Prosperity by John Mackey
What I hope to accomplish tonight is to challenge your
thinking about the modern freedom movement. I believe the freedom movement has
been its own worst enemy by foolishly limiting its appeal and impact with an
overly narrow interpretation about the meaning and purpose of freedom. From a
business perspective, the freedom movement faces major marketing challenges, the
result of its poor job of branding itself to the world.
| | On May 13,
2004, John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, spoke at FreedomFest in Las
Vegas. His critique of the freedom movement created a controversy, so we obtained
permission from Mr. Mackey to transcribe the talk and publish it, for the first
time, in Liberty. Mr. Mackey made small changes for the printed version of the
talk and updated all relevant business numbers to the current day.
|
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Let me tell you a few brief things about myself as background. Before I
started Whole Foods Market I attended two different universities, where I
accumulated 130 hours of electives, primarily in philosophy and religion, and
ended up with no degree. I never took a single business class. I actually think
that has worked to my advantage in business. I spent my late teens and early
twenties trying to discover the meaning and purpose of my own life. My
search for meaning and purpose led me into the counter-culture movement of the
late 1960s and 1970s. I studied eastern philosophy and religion at the time, and
still practice both yoga and meditation. I studied ecology. I became a vegetarian
(I am currently a vegan), I lived in a commune, and I grew my hair and beard
long. I'm one of those crunchy-granola types. Politically, I drifted to the Left
and embraced the ideology that business and corporations were essentially evil
because they selfishly sought profits. I believed that government was "good" (if
the "right" people had control of it) because it altruistically worked for the
public interest. With that background, I felt well prepared to launch my
business in 1978. My initial business, a natural foods market called Safer Way,
was a small 3,000 square foot store that I opened with my girlfriend, with an
initial $45,000 in capital. We were very idealistic, and we started the business
because we thought it would be fun. We were right we had a blast then, and
we've continued to have a great time during the last 28 years. The time has
passed quickly.
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| Becoming an entrepreneur
completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be
wrong. |
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Along with the for-profit business, I also created a business of "heart" and
I think I have been equally successful with that venture. After running Safer Way
for a couple of years, we decided to relocate to a much larger building and we
opened Whole Foods Market in 1980. No pun intended, but we grew the business
organically from there. At the time I started my business, the Left had
taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation
of consumers, workers, society, and the environment. I believed that "profit" was
a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a
whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I
believed about business was proven to be wrong. The most important thing I
learned about business in my first year was that business wasn't based on
exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on
voluntary cooperation. No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have
competitive alternatives in the market place; employees have competitive
alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to
invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers they all
need to cooperate to create value for their customers. If they do, then any
realized profit can be divided amongst the creators of the value through
competitive market dynamics. In other words, business is not a zero-sum
game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win game and I
really like that. However, I discovered despite my idealism that our
customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were
underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was
forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless
fees, licenses, fines, and taxes. Were we profitable? Not at first. Safer
Way managed to lose half of its capital in the first year $23,000. Despite
the loss, we were still accused of exploiting our customers with high prices and
our employees with low wages. The investors weren't making a profit and we had no
money to donate. Plus, with our losses, we paid no taxes. I had somehow joined
the "dark side" I was now one of the bad guys. According to the
perspective of the Left, I had become a greedy and selfish businessman. At this
point, I rationally chose to abandon the leftist philosophy of my youth, because
it no longer adequately explained how the world really worked. With my l eftist
interpretation of the world now shattered, I looked around for alternative
explanations for making sense of the world.
| Business is not a zero
sum game with a winner and a loser. It is a win, win, win, win game and I
really like that. |
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I stumbled into reading Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises,
Ayn Rand I read all of them. I said to myself, "Wow, this all makes sense.
This is how the world really works. This is incredible." Then I became Laissez
Faire Books' best customer for the next five years. I think I read every book in
their catalog. If any of you in the audience have written books, I have probably
read them. I identify myself as a Libertarian. I am one of those people
who actually votes Libertarian. I have voted strictly Libertarian since 1980. You
sometimes hear that argument, "Why do you vote Libertarian? You're just throwing
your vote away." I always say, "Gosh, if everybody had that attitude toward their
vote, then the Libertarian candidate would get elected." What I love most
about the freedom movement are the ideas of voluntary cooperation and spontaneous
order when channeled through free markets, leading to the continuous evolution
and progress of humanity. I believe that individual freedom in free markets, when
combined with property rights through rule of law and ethical democratic
government, results in societies that maximize prosperity and establish
conditions that promote human happiness and well-being. Unfortunately,
despite all my enthusiasm and formidable debating skills, I have had little
success converting people to the freedom movement. Has that been your experience
as well? The freedom movement remains a small, relatively unimportant movement in
the United States today. The question is: "Why?" I want the freedom movement to
sweep the world. So how can we make the freedom movement a more vital and
dominant intellectual and cultural movement in the United States? I hope
to do two things tonight. First, I will critique the freedom movement and
highlight mistakes that have greatly lessened its impact and influence in the
world. Second, I will challenge the movement to re-think its purpose and values.
We need to evolve our paradigm along with the brand that we offer the world. As a
businessman who knows something about marketing and branding, I can tell you the
freedom movement is branding itself very poorly. Let's start with the
critique. How many of you have read Ayn Rand? How many of you have been
influenced by her? "Atlas Shrugged" remains one of the five greatest novels I
have ever read. Who can ever forget characters like Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden,
Francisco d'Anconia, from "Atlas Shrugged," as well as Howard Roark in "The
Fountainhead"? These characters all demonstrated tremendous passions and drive,
backed by high self-esteem. Each one inspired this young entrepreneur. I wanted
to be just like those heroic characters in "Atlas Shrugged." However,
despite her literary greatness and many positive contributions to the freedom
movement, I believe that Rand has also harmed the movement. How? She was overly
provocative. The "virtue of selfishness" is an oxymoron. Selfishness is not a
virtue. Now, I understand all the arguments I've read all the books. I
know that self-interest channeled to the social good, as expressed through Adam
Smith's "invisible hand," is the single most brilliant insight about social
organization ever made in history. That being said, selfishness (as opposed to
self-interest) is still not a virtue. It is something to be discouraged, and not
something to be supported. Similarly, I find insupportable the idea Ivan
Boesky and Gordon Gekko made infamous, that "Greed is Good." Well, greed is not
good. Greed is not a virtue. Excepting a few people on Wall Street and some
people in the freedom movement, almost no one else in our greater society will
support selfishness and greed as "good" when they see it. So my question to you
is, why doesn't the freedom movement condemn selfishness and greed? If we don't,
we are inappropriately seen as supporters of selfishness and greed. In my
opinion, this is a major branding mistake that continues to undermine our
movement. How many people in the audience believe that the only social
responsibility that business has is to maximize profits? Before I make my next
point, let me boast about Whole Foods Market for a moment. In 2005, we did $4.7
billion in sales and realized $136 million in net profits. With our current
growth rates, by 2010 we should do over $12 billion in sales. On a percentage
basis Whole Foods Market is the most profitable public food retailing business in
the United States, with the highest net profit percentage, sales growth, and
sales per square foot. I make this boast to prove that (a) I believe in profit
and (b) I am quite competent in producing it. I love profit. Profit is
good and it is socially necessary. However, some people in the freedom movement
have long argued that the only social responsibility that business has is to
maximize profits. I believe that profits are an essential purpose of business,
but I would argue that they are not the sole, or even most important, purpose of
business. Profit is the most important purpose to the business owners. But owners
do not exist in a vacuum. I believe the best way to think about business is as
an interdependent system of constituencies connected together in a "harmony of
interests." Is maximizing business profits a goal that customers have when
they patronize a business? Are customers coming in thinking, "I'm so glad I'm in
Whole Foods today because I want to help you maximize your profits"? What about
the people who work for a business? "I took a job a Whole Foods because I was
seeking to maximize the profits of the company." Or the community: "We're so glad
you came to our community and we want you to maximize your profits." This is
ludicrous, right?
| If we are to win the
allegience of the young people of America, we must create a vision of the good
life and the good society that is irresistible to them.
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Free-market economists, in their legitimate defense of the value of business
profits, have often harmed the value of the larger brand of business in our
society. These economists have not created a paradigm of business that will ever
be fully accepted by society as "good." Business instead continues to play the
role of the bad guy in our society. Selfishness, greed, worker exploitation,
consumer ripoffs, and environmental destruction, all in the name of maximizing
profits this is the reality of the brand that business is burdened with in
the world today. I believe that business has a much greater purpose.
Business, working through free markets, is possibly the greatest force for good
on the planet today. When executed well, business increases prosperity, ends
poverty, improves the quality of life, and promotes the health and longevity of
the world population at an unprecedented rate. This audience understands these
truths, but how many people in our greater society comprehend it? The freedom
movement has also poorly defended the social legitimacy of both business and free
markets. A new paradigm for business and the free market is necessary one
that accepts the importance of profits, of course, but also one that recognizes
that business has legitimate social responsibilities that go far beyond merely
maximizing profits. How many people in the audience believe drugs should
be legalized? What about pornography? How many of you believe that prostitution
should be legal? I believe all three should be legalized within certain
parameters which protect children. Who among you believes that private ownership
of guns should be made illegal? I certainly don't. Gun ownership is protected by
the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. It is an important right. I
believe, however, that all four of these issues are far less critical for
improving our society than creating educational choice, privatizing Social
Security, deregulating health care, and enacting meaningful tort reform. The
legalization of drugs, pornography, prostitution, and guns, as issues, are all
too closely associated with the freedom movement. Aligning ourselves with these
issues has hurt our brand tremendously, by associating the freedom movement with
cultural decadence. Parents don't want their children's lives ruined by drug
experimentation, or their innocence prematurely lost to pornography and
prostitution, or their lives ended with a bullet. These four freedom
issues need to be de-emphasized by the freedom movement if we hope to create a
mass movement and continue to evolve our society in positive directions. How many
of you believe that lessening the power of government over our lives is the most
important goal of the freedom movement? I believe that the freedom movement's
biggest mistake today is focusing primarily on freedom "from" government coercion
as its primary goal. Obviously this is a very important goal, but I strongly
believe it must be accompanied by an equally important goal: the freedom "to"
take responsibility for our own lives; the freedom "to" take responsibility for
our own communities and our planet. Freedom from government coercion is
clearly a very, very important goal. But unless you live in a country like China,
North Korea, Cuba, or Iran that lacks many personal liberties that we Westerners
take largely for granted, freedom is not usually an important goal. American
citizens mostly take their liberties for granted. Unlike the people in this
audience, most Americans forget that vigilance is the eternal price we have to
pay for protecting liberties. Once we are free, or relatively free, to
live our lives in the manner we choose, we must answer the question, "How then
shall we actually live our lives?" Will we live our lives as hedonists, indulging
ourselves with various amusements, diversions, and pleasures? Or will we choose
the more difficult path of personal development and acceptance of social
responsibility? The freedom movement needs to reposition itself and
re-brand itself. Personal freedom may be the first goal we work towards
but we can't stop there; it isn't enough. There is so much more to life.
Using our freedom to take on greater social responsibility, as well as striving
to reach our fullest potential as humans, needs to be a goal we support just as
much as freedom from government coercion. When I was a naive (some people
in the audience by this time probably think I'm still naive) and idealistic young
man, I migrated to the Left for my value system. Why did I do that? Because the
Left provided an idealistic vision of the way the world could be. However, the
reality of the Left's vision proved to be terribly flawed. Its socialist economic
system not only didn't work very well, but in its communist manifestation it
justified monstrous governments directly responsible for the murders of over 100
million people in the 20th century. Despite the horrible track record of leftist
ideology, millions of young Americans continue to migrate to an intellectually
bankrupt Left because the Left still seems to be idealistic, and idealism is
magnetic to the young. Idealism will always be magnetic to the intelligent and
sensitive young people of the world.
| The freedom movement must
advocate the ideal of self-responsibility for health. We own our own bodies,
don't we? This is no minor thing. |
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How sad that the freedom movement often refuses to be idealistic. We usually
don't even attempt to compete. We simply forfeit the field to the Left because we
pride ourselves on our "realism" and "tough-mindedness." We talk about freedom
and prosperity and that is about it. We have no real theory of either the
good life or the good society except the fundamental belief that if people have
sufficient personal and economic liberties (as in Friedrich Hayek's spontaneous
order) we will create a prosperous society. Freedom and prosperity are
important goals, but they must be only the beginning goals for us. If we
are to win the allegiance of the young people of America then we must dare to be
more idealistic. We must create a vision of the good life and the good society
that is irresistible to the young. How many of you are familiar with
Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs"? For those of you who aren't, Maslow was a
psychologist who did most of his work in 1950s and '60s. His theory is that we
can understand human motivations with a simple model. There are various "need"
levels and they arrange themselves basically in a hierarchy. At the bottom of the
hierarchy are the physical needs, such as food, water, sex. Once those needs are
relatively well met, you move up to the next level in the hierarchy: safety
needs, such as security and physiological safety, take precedence. Next you move
into needs for love and community: affiliation, acceptance, affection, community,
and family. Once those needs are met, you tend to move to self-esteem needs:
feeling competent, gaining approval and recognition from others, and garnering a
sense that you are a worthwhile human being. The next level would be the
attainment of aesthetic and cognitive needs which can be summarized as the
pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Finally at the top of
this hierarchy is self-actualization (and the Army's advertising firm must have
read Maslow): "Be all you can be." This means reaching your fullest potential as
a human being. I believe that one of life's purposes is fundamentally to learn
and grow. If we move up Maslow's hierarchy and don't stagnate at lower levels,
life becomes an adventure of learning, growing, loving, and rejoicing. If we are
not growing as human beings, then we are diminishing. The freedom
movement, in my opinion, needs to embrace the ideal, not just of economic growth,
but also of personal growth. If we use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as our
criterion for evaluating the freedom movement, we see that it is primarily
focused on the lower need levels: meeting the physical needs and safety needs
through increased prosperity. To be perfectly blunt about it: the freedom
movement is largely materialistic in its approach to life, stuck in the lower
levels of Maslow's hierarchy. The higher need levels love, self-esteem,
the good, the true and the beautiful, and self-actualization are either
taken for granted or simply ignored. Study after study shows that
material prosperity, by itself, does not create happiness. We have higher needs,
as expressed in Maslow's hierarchy, and the freedom movement needs to stop
ignoring them. The freedom movement needs to consciously create a vision that
addresses meeting the higher needs of Americans, beyond basic physical and safety
needs. That is the secret of the success of the Left, despite its bankrupt
economic philosophy. The Left entices the young with promises of community, love,
purpose, peace, health, compassion, caring, and environmental sustainability. The
Left's vision of how to meet these higher needs in people is fundamentally
flawed. But the idealism and the call to the higher need levels is magnetic and
seductive, nonetheless. The irony of the situation, as I see it, is that the Left
has idealistic visions of higher human potential and social responsibility but
has no effective strategies to realize its vision. The freedom movement has
strategies that could meet higher human potential and social responsibility but
lacks the idealism and vision to implement these strategies. I assert that the
freedom movement can become a successful mass movement today if it will
consciously adopt a more idealistic approach to its marketing, branding, and
overall vision, and embrace a vision of meeting higher human potentials and
greater social responsibility. Now let us discuss some of the ideals and
goals that I think we should embrace as a movement. Who among you believes that
socialized medicine is the answer to the health care crisis in America? The Left
believes this is the answer: equal access to the health care system for all
Americans no one denied for financial reasons, in a single-payer system.
Socialized health care seems very idealistic, and as such, appeals to many
people. However, as Milton Friedman taught us, there is no such thing as a free
lunch in health care or anywhere else. We know the single-payer system
means health care rationing through queuing up in long lines for expensive
treatments and denial of some services to many of the elderly as too expensive.
We know that uncaring government bureaucrats will run a single-payer system and,
without the discipline of competitive markets, won't provide quality customer and
patient service. We know that health care innovation and progress will slow down
tremendously, because much less money will be dedicated to medical research,
since such research is long-term by nature and easily sacrificed to current
budget limitations.
| What would happen with
true competition in school choice, with students and parents becoming truly
empowered consumers instead of virtual prisoners and slaves? We would have an
explosion in educational innovation. |
|
The United States continues its steady movement toward socialized health care
partly because the freedom movement has not articulated an idealistic vision of
what would be possible if we deregulated health care. We have fought a strictly
defensive battle on this issue, and that strategy needs to change. First
of all, health is not merely the absence of disease. It is vitality and a sense
of well-being. Health is partly about eating a healthy diet. Regular daily
exercise and minimizing the poisons we take into our bodies, such as sugar,
alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, are also very important. Health is about getting
adequate sleep, and also about having a sense of personal life purpose and
maintaining an optimistic and positive attitude. Most importantly, our health and
well-being are our own responsibilities. Our doctors cannot assume these
responsibilities. Nor can the bureaucratic "experts" controlling a health care
system. The freedom movement must first advocate the ideal of
self-responsibility for health. We own our own bodies, don't we? This is no minor
thing, because the Left, by supporting socialized medicine, demonstrates a belief
that common citizens are too stupid to take responsibility for our own health and
therefore need the "experts" to step in and control things for our own
good. Next, we must advocate the ideal of free markets and competition in
health care. The monopoly that medical doctors largely have in medical treatment
must be broken. They should have to compete fully with other practitioners, such
as chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths and yes, my skeptical
friend, John Stossel, even homeopaths. Competition is beneficial in every market
and it will be so in the health and wellness market as well. Doctors don't
compete on quality or price right now. They don't post their prices, and it is
almost impossible to get any real idea of the quality of their services except
through trial and error. We don't currently have an efficient, competitive market
in health care. The final thing we must do in health care is to change the
tax structure. Eliminating tax incentives for health care would change
everything. Most companies (like Whole Foods) would stop offering free or
subsidized health insurance if the benefit wasn't tax-deductible. Individuals
would no longer receive "free" health care and would start spending their own
money. The power of the markets would increase both the efficiency and
effectiveness of our health care system enormously. Try to imagine, for
just a minute, how much we could improve the health of Americans if we embraced
the ideals that I have outlined here: self-responsibility, competition,
deregulation, and tax incentives. Let markets truly work in health care and I
have little doubt that the health of Americans would improve immensely. I predict
that we would see an increase in longevity to nearly 100 years within just a few
decades true freedom and innovation. Are good health and increased
longevity worthy ideals for our movement to embrace? I think they are!
Peace. Why should the Left own the peace ideal? Why should the idealistic young
turn to the Left to find peace? Global peace is within our reach for the first
time in history. Let me quote from Johan Norberg's wonderful book, "In Defense of
Global Capitalism": The number of wars has diminished by half
during the last decade. Today, less than 1% of the world's population is directly
affected by military conflicts. One reason is that democracies simply do not make
war on each other. Another is that international exchange makes conflict less
interesting. Cross ownership, multi-national corporations, and investment in
privately owned resources make it hard to tell where one country really ends and
another one begins.
Despite the war in Iraq, which looms
large in our minds, the truth is that wars in the world are actually in decline.
The majority of the world's nations are now committed to democratic governments
and market economies. As this global network strengthens, peace will increasingly
become the world norm. The freedom movement should own the peace ideal; we
do not own it now. Let us retrieve the peace ideal, because we know the truth:
democracy + free markets = peace between nations who share these social,
economic, and governmental structures. Who in this room believes the
United States has an excellent kindergarten through 12th grade educational
system? Who here believes that the way to improve education in the United States
is to increase bureaucratic control by the government? Socialism doesn't work.
This was proven beyond a doubt in the 20th century. Nation after nation tried to
replace capitalism with socialism and without exception their efforts to improve
the quality of their citizens' lives failed. Most Americans know that socialism
doesn't work as an economic system. We allow competitive markets to produce our
food, our housing, our clothing, our transportation, and most of the goods and
services that we consume. Why then do so many people embrace socialism in health
care and education? Because we have not created an idealistic vision of the way
things could be if they were grounded in freedom instead of governmental control.
What is the alternative to socialism in education? The free-market alternative is
competition, innovation, and choice. The monopoly of the government over
education needs to end. The domination of our children's education by the
teachers' unions needs to stop.
| The freedom movment must
embrace the ideals of love, care, and compassion, and return these words to their
true meanings. |
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What other reforms are needed? The following reforms are old news to people
in the freedom movement: school choice through vouchers and tax credits, along
with privatizing public schools and selling off their assets to the private
sector. What would happen with true competition in school choice, with students
and parents becoming truly empowered consumers instead of virtual prisoners and
slaves, as they are in the socialized system that exists today? We would have an
explosion in educational innovation, and unprecedented improvements as
competition and choice systematically eliminated poor teachers and poor schools.
In the marketplace, a series of successful educational organizations would grow
and spread throughout the nation. We would see incredible diversity in types of
schools and styles of education meeting the diverse needs and desires of students
and parents, instead of the dictates of the educational bureaucracy and teachers'
unions. Educational empowerment is a noble ideal and one that I believe
mainstream Americans will embrace, once parents understand how their own children
will be the true beneficiaries of these reforms. Where the freedom movement has
failed is in creating and articulating a vision to promote this ideal. We're too
afraid to be seen as utopian or near-utopian in our thinking. There is so much
cynicism in response. You have all heard "it's not realistic," and "it's a
fantasy, you've got to be realistic." But for people to give up ideals like
socialized education and medicine equal access to schools and health care
for everyone regardless of income they need to believe the replacements
are going to be substantial improvements. The way to lead them to support change
is to create an idealistic vision of what is possible. Next, you need to
evangelize this vision to create a sense of excitement. Then they will agree to
travel down that road with you to create the necessary changes. If there is no
exciting, idealistic vision of what is possible, most people won't bother to join
the struggle. Life is simply too short and most people have better things to
do. Who among you has read Bjørn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical
Environmentalist"? I cannot recommend this great book to you more highly. It
convincingly demonstrates that the doom-and-gloom, apocalyptic crowd has greatly
exaggerated the decline of the global environment in many important areas such as
air and water quality and the decline in natural resources. With that qualifier
said, I still believe the freedom movement has erred strategically by letting the
Left own the ideal of environmental sustainability. The ideal of
environomental sustainability is certainly going to grow in importance over the
next several years. It isn't going to fade away. I personally think it is the
Achilles heel of the freedom movement, and until it is proactively embraced as an
important ideal by members of the freedom movement, the movement will become less
and less relevant to the idealistic young in American society. My company
currently employs over 39,000 people. I estimate that nearly 100% of them care
greatly about environmental sustainability. I know that I personally do. At Whole
Foods, Team Members drift to the Left primarily because of the environmental
issues. Maintaining environmental sustainability is in the collective
best interest of everyone. No one will argue that premise. The real question is,
"What are the best ways to do it?" What are the trade-offs we need to make? When
the freedom movement ignores the issue of environmental sustainability, the Left
will dominate the discussion of the issues. Remember that the Left's goal
remains either to cripple or to destroy capitalism. The freedom movement must
embrace the ideal of environmental sustainability but must bring to the debate
its commitment to property rights, markets, and proper incentives to effectively
resist the inevitable leftist arguments for more bureaucratic controls and
regulations. Why should the Left own the ideals (and it does own them right now)
of love, caring, and compassion especially with its track record? How can
a movement that in its extreme form is responsible for the murders of more than
100 million people, slaughtered in the name of its ideals, own those three words?
What the Left has done is create a world of victims and a cult of victimology.
Then the Left accuses everyone who disagrees with it of lacking love, caring, and
compassion. What a bunch of baloney! The freedom movement must embrace the ideals
of love, caring, and compassion, and return these words to their true meanings.
Love, caring, and compassion do not equate to guilt, and they do not mean
pandering to the demands of the various victims of the world. Spreading freedom
through the world is the most loving, caring, and compassionate thing we can do
for people. True freedom allows people to create prosperity and gives them the
opportunity to move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs towards self-actualization.
True freedom gives us the opportunity to take social responsibility and to work
towards making the world a better place. The freedom movement needs to support
economic globalization. Globalization is the most caring and compassionate
strategy we can implement to help the developing world lift itself out of
poverty. This is the simple truth. But how many people understand this truth? The
Left has convinced the idealistic young that globalization is harming the
developing world that it is a plot by greedy corporations to rule the
world. The freedom movement has a responsibility to explain the wisdom of
globalization and to hold it up as a noble ideal. I began my talk tonight
by telling you that I spent my late teens and early twenties searching for the
meaning and purpose of my life. My strategy was really a very simple one: I
decided to follow my heart wherever it took me. My heart has led me to distant
places and to great worldly success. What I have learned on this journey is that
in the core of my inner being there is endless creativity and there is limitless
love. I believe if each of you look deep within your own inner being, you will
likely also discover these two passions within yourself. It is my belief
that we should act in this world with open loving hearts, and that we need to
channel our deepest creative impulses in a loving way toward other living beings.
Do we really want to win the battle for freedom and prosperity in the world
today? If we do, then let us bind these words together, as tightly as we can,
with the words love, care, and compassion. Freedom belongs with love.
Prosperity belongs with compassion. This is the vision I hold for the future;
this is the world I strive to create. I urge you to join me. Together we can
create a world where people have lives full of purpose, love, adventure, a world
of freedom, prosperity, and compassion. Now, I have a brief commercial.
Along with a few friends, I am starting a new initiative within the freedom
movement. We call this initiative "FLOW", for Freedom Lights Our World. What we
envision will bring into the freedom movement the idealistic young that are being
lost systematically to the Left. Many of the ideas I've talked about tonight are
core concepts of FLOW. If you're interested in learning a little more about FLOW,
visit our web site: www.flowproject.org. I am going to end with a
quotation from Goethe. This sentiment should be memorized by every aspiring
entrepreneur in the audience: Whatever you can do, or dream
you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic.
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