Reason TV has put up a short interview with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, in which he stresses the imperative for businesses to make a moral defense of capitalism, and to embrace a purpose higher than the maximization of shareholder wealth.

“We’re trying to change [the] narrative and get people to realize the type of value that business creates. The narrative of business being fundamentally greedy and selfish and exploitive…that undermines businesses’ standing in society, and it has to be defended on an ethical basis, not just on the fact that it creates wealth.”

For those of you who teach business ethics, I’d highly recommend taking a look at this 2005 piece from Reason on “Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business.” It’s essentially a roundtable on Milton Friedman’s (overly) famous piece which claimed that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. In addition to Mackey, the roundtable features thoughts from Friedman himself, and from Cypress Semiconductor CEO and erstwhile libertarian internet sensation T.J. Rogers. The whole thing would make a great addition to a syllabus.