Tim Ferriss recently interviewed Charles Koch on his podcast. At first I found it difficult to reconcile the obviously principled, kindly man, a person concerned with the state of the world and hoping to contribute as much as he can, with some of his deeds, which include:
- Waging an expensive campaign against the minimum wage
- Railing against sustainable energy sources and casting doubt on the science of climate change as late as 2016
- Running companies that skirt environmental regulations and pollute the environment with vast amounts of toxic waste
- Stealing vast amounts of oil from Native Americans
- Buying political influence to dismantle regulations on behalf of Koch Industries
Koch frequently claims that one of his key motivating factors is to “make people’s lives better.” Unless he’s a brilliant actor, I have no reason to doubt he believes this. But his true legacy is one of pollution, theft, and oppression of the weak and downtrodden.
Koch is dedicated to free market principles, believing wholeheartedly that any restriction of free trade leads to reduced human autonomy. According to Koch, environmental regulations, organized labor, minimum wage, nationalized healthcare, and the social safety net — all of these serve as impediments to free trade, and thus reduce human freedom and potential.
Common sense and vast amounts of evidence suggest otherwise: human beings are more free, productive, and happy with some basic level of minimum security and service provided by a tax-funded government on the municipal, regional, state, and national levels. We all enjoy the benefits of clean air and water, national parks, public schools, fire and police services, etc. There is strong evidence that expanding tax-funded public services in the United States, such as a national healthcare system, will improve quality of life and save vast amounts of money. One study that came to the this conclusion was actually funded by the Koch brothers.
But don’t expect empirical evidence to change the mind of Charles Koch; he is driven by reason and social-economic theory above all else. This approach has served him well in terms of building his personal fortune. But it’s a terrible way to build a better society. Social progress requires a variety of problem solving modes, not just rationalism. We also need empiricism, network analysis, iterative system refinement, the subjectivism/relativism provided by literature and the arts, and every other tool in the problem-solving kit.
Koch consistently argues that the “top-down” approach — a few experts making the rules for how society should operation — is the bane of human societies and the enemy of human prosperity. Certain historical examples, such as Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Four Pests Campaign” appear to prove him right. But Koch is also practicing a “top-down” approach, using his enormous wealth and influence to spread his kooky dogma about how unregulated free markets will somehow lead us to a new age of human potential and prosperity. He tells his own workers how to think and vote, and buys up vast influence within the GOP to kill environmental regulations that restrict the growth of his companies.
And yet this vast hypocrisy appears to be invisible to him. Few people in the United States wield more “top-down” ideological power than Charles Koch. While he may genuinely believe he’s doing good in the world, he would do far more good by relinquishing a substantial amount of his wealth and power, providing more room for other ideas and evidence-based policies.
susan johnson
i agree
Chris S
Good article–it makes me think of the introduction to How to Make Friends and Influence People, I believe, in which the author makes the point that, no matter how bad people are (up to and including serial killers), they view themselves in a positive light. Combine that with the brain’s capacity to reject at a subconscious level information and ideas that threaten one’s deeply held beliefs, and there doesn’t seem much hope of changing the mind of someone like Koch. It seems to me yet another reason why we need to improve our democracy so that it is truly democratic, such that people like him can’t buy themselves more than one vote.