Heard an interesting bit on National Public Radio on the way into work this morning.

(Yeah, I know, we can argue about the source later...)

The Morning Edition host was chatting with John Mackey,co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, who was plugging hisnew book, of course.

His campaign is one of a corporate consciousness and howbusinesses are inherently about more than simply “maximizingprofits." He also touches on how business owners can keep multiplestakeholders happy without sacrificing the interests of otherstakeholders, i.e., investors, employees, vendorsand customers.

It stuck not only because it made sense but because it touchedon something a couple of co-workers and I discussed last week inthe office: the concept of profits, motives and consequences.

Specifically, our discussion delved into the concept of wellnesswith regard to carriers and employers in that promoting wellnesssounds altruistic, but at the end of the day, it's simply anotherway for both carriers and employers to maximize their own profit byholding down utilization costs. As Mackey said during his NPRinterview, that’s a “win-win-win” for everyone involved in thattransaction. So does the motive matter?

But I digress…Mackey’s interview was better than most in themornings, but it was this bombshell, dropped at the very end totease the next day’s conclusion, that will almost certainly garnerthe headlines.

“Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism,” Mackeyexplained, talking about the Patient Protection and Affordable CareAct. “Socialism is where the government owns the means ofproduction. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means ofproduction, but they control it, and that’s what’s happening withthese reforms.”

Never mind that the coverage to follow will be an unfairrepresentation of the entire interview, which I found thoughtfuland forward thinking.

Now I never paid much attention to Mackey before this morningand have only rarely shopped at his stores, so I wasn’t sure whatto expect this morning. Sure I assumed he was some leftynature-lover, but he obviously turned out to be a pretty hard-corelibertarian (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

So I appreciate his desire to hit the right classification here,but just once I like us to have a single debate without racism,sexism or some anachronistic political system brought into the mix.He’s right in that it’s not socialism—that’s what killed the publicoption. But fascism seems like a bit of an overreach as well, andit makes it difficult to take him seriously after that.

All of that being said, I think what we’ve found time and againis that if we don’t police our own activities and behaviors, we’llfind a market (or government) that will be happy to come in and doit for us.

That’s what we’re seeing with reform. We have needed somekind of reform for decades now—ever since Nixon started thatconversation so long ago—and we discovered that if we didn’t do itourselves, the other guy will be more than happy to. We’re seeingit with guns now, too, with the latest string of shootingpushing public opinion (the market) into forcing the feds intomaking changes.

No rights—or markets—are without limits, self-imposed orotherwise. Sure, speech is free, but the Supreme Court ruled yearsago that you can’t stand up and yell “fire!” in a crowdedtheater.

Drunk driving’s another great example. Like the sexism andsmoking on Mad Men, it used to be no big deal. In fact,North by Northwest features a drunken Cary Grant in one ofthe funniest attempted murders on screen. It would horrify today’steetotaling audiences.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this other than to say it'sbetter we make changes than have someone make them for us. Or, as Iused to tell me ex-wife, “If you don’t like how I do the laundry(or the dishes, or the lawn) you should probably do ityourself.”