#1569 - John Mackey

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Hello, John. Nice to meet you. Likewise. Thank you for welcoming me to Austin, and thanks for the food. No one's ever brought me food here.

John Mackey (0:22)

I'm a grocer, that's what I do.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

I know, but you brought me actual frozen meat, so thank you very much.

John Mackey (0:29)

Frozen meat, some vegan cheese.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Yeah, that will go to friends.

John Mackey (0:34)

It's really good. It's really good.

Joe Rogan (0:36)

Does it taste good or is it good for you? Both.

John Mackey (0:39)

It's just made strictly out of almonds. That's all that's there.

Joe Rogan (0:42)

Oh, really?

John Mackey (0:42)

Yeah, taste it. It's a cream cheese with chives in it. It's delicious.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

I really just like almonds. Can I just have almonds?

John Mackey (0:48)

You can, but you'll like the cheese. Give it a try. I know you're an open-minded man.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

I'll try your vegan cheese.

But you're sending me mixed signals. You gave me frozen elk meat and vegan cheese.

John Mackey (1:02)

I'm covering all bases.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

What I want to talk to you about... Well, first of all, you have a book out. The book is Conscious Capitalism. No.

John Mackey (1:11)

That book that's out is Conscious Leadership, which is a sequel to... You already have that book.

Joe Rogan (1:15)

Right, but I have this one right here.

John Mackey (1:17)

Yeah, because I brought that today.

Joe Rogan (1:18)

And Conscious Leadership, a sequel to Conscious Capitalism. For a lot of people, that's an oxymoron. That's jumbo shrimp or military intelligence, right?

Conscious Capitalism. Today, in this day and age, this very strange time, there's a large... I shouldn't say a large segment, but it's a very squeaky wheel. There's a segment of our culture that thinks that capitalism is evil.

John Mackey (1:42)

Yeah, I'm not in that classification. In fact, I think the opposite. I think capitalism is the greatest thing humanity has ever done.

If you go back just 200 years ago, when capitalism was really getting going, 94% of the people alive on the planet Earth lived on less than $2 a day, and that's adjusted for inflation. 94%. Today, it's under 10%.

If you go back 200 years ago, the average lifespan was 30 Now it's 72.6. Advanced countries, it's about 80

Illiteracy rates 200 years ago, where 88% of the world couldn't read, now it's down to 12%.

Joe Rogan (2:20)

But can you attribute that solely to capitalism, or wouldn't you attribute that to innovation and technology?

John Mackey (2:27)

That's the right name for capitalism. Karl Marx called it capitalism. What it really is, a better name, which we talked about in Conscious Leadership, is innovationism.

Continuous innovation is how humanity progresses. But it's business that takes the innovations of science and puts them into forms that create value for other people.

So it's been capitalism or innovationism that's lifted humanity out of the dirt, that's transforming our world. Even as we speak, it's amazing just what's happened in my lifetime. It's astounding, all the progress that humanity's made. And we're going through a tough year right now, so it doesn't work in a perfect linear line, but the trend lines are clear. The book I always try to get everybody to read is Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now. You ever take a look at that book?

Joe Rogan (3:17)

No, I haven't, but I'm a big fan of a lot of his work.

John Mackey (3:20)

Yeah, that book just documents, it's just unbelievable how he documents progress since the Enlightenment. It's incredible.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

The problem that a lot of people have with capitalism is they attribute capitalism to greed. They attribute greed and the problems of the world and environmental destruction and ignoring climate change, they attribute that to capitalism. They think that the way out of this is socialism, some type of socialism.

In my opinion, the people that are saying that, I don't think there's anything wrong with contributing and contributing to a better community in terms of making healthcare more affordable or free, making education more affordable or free.

But you gotta, human beings need incentives in order to perform. And that's just human nature, whether we like it or not. If you want a system that allows for a continual progress of innovation, like constant innovation, you gotta give people incentives to do that. Just the human animal strives to achieve for whatever reason.

John Mackey (4:33)

Totally agree.

I mean, it's not like socialism hasn't been tried. In the last 100 years, 42 countries have tried socialism, and there have been 42 failures.