In an interview with Reason TV,Whole Foods co-founderJohn Mackey answers a rangeof questions about why so many intellectuals areopposed to the freemarket, whetherthroughouthistory and to this today.

“Is it a misunderstanding of what business does?” asks Nick Gillespie. “Is it envy? Is it a lack of capacity to understand that what entrepreneurs do or what innovators do?”

Here’s a sample:

Intellectuals have always merce. That is something that tradesmen did; people that were in a lower class. And so you had minorities, oftentimes did it, like you had the Jews in the West. And when they became wealthy and successful and rose, then they were envied, then they were persecuted and their wealth confiscated, and many times they were run out of country after country. Same thing happened with the Chinese in the East. They were great businesspeople as well. So the intellectuals have always sided kind of with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kind of kept down. You might say that capitalism was the first time that businesspeople kinda caught a break, because of Adam Smith and the philosophy that came along with that, and the industrial revolution began this huge upwards surge of prosperity.

Mackey does a nice job summarizing the historical and practical forces, but another dynamicworth noting is Thomas Sowell’s notion of the “unconstrained vision”(or the “vision of the anointed”),which one findsamong many intellectuals. WhenSowell talks about “visions” he’s speaking less toour particular position (vocationally or otherwise) and more to how weperceivethe basic nature and destiny of man—“not simply his existing practices,” Sowell writes, “but his ultimate potential and ultimate limitations.”

For many intellectuals, for example, human capability is viewed as vast rather than limited. Problems are tobe solved through “smart” solutions rather than messy, incremental trade-offs. Justicecanbe achieved bycontrolling es rather than constructing the rightset of rules. Knowledge is important, but mainlya very particular kindof knowledge — one that requires a very particular kind of education and abstract thinking, rather than practical action, long-term wisdom, and particular prudence. Because our goals are so obviously achievable, freedom is seen as theability to achieve thosegoals, rather than exemption from the power andcontrolof others.Specialization is questionable and suspect rather than ed.The path to achievingthe good is paved bysweeping categorical gestures rather than incrementalimprovements.

To Mackey’s point,fromthis underlying vision, one is not likely to springto free-market advocacy.

For more on Sowell’s thoughts on this, I mend his book, Intellectuals and Society.