A couple of weeks ago my neighbor put the book “Kochland – the Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America” in my newspaper box. We are still being careful to stay isolated during the pandemic, so mostly communicate electronically and share things using this method of putting the item in a designated spot. We tend to share books that are designed to “get under our skins” – such as this one. I immediately knew that this is one of “those” books by the subtle graphics on the cover – Giant black block text on a bright yellow background! The cover makes it have the “look and feel” of junk literature like is displayed at the check-out counters in grocery stores. Normally I would skip over something so garish, but since it is an offering from my neighbor I decided to read it.

I found the story to be rather intriguing. The first 7/8 of the book described a ruthless but principled adherence to the “free market” tradition in America. According to the book, the Koch brothers have an extremely sharp focus on maximizing profits and power. They have figured out how to make vast amounts of money off of investments that others either didn’t notice, or weren’t in the place to take advantage of. The story is very much about maximizing profits by optimizing efficiency. That seems like a good thing, and they have been very successful. They did this by being flexible, and looking into long term opportunities rather than quick turn-around deals. Rather than sell off assets of newly acquired businesses, they invested heavily to bring things up to snuff. Rather than attempt to “get by” on regulations such as EPA or OSHA requirements, they enforced a policy of 100% compliance.

They had their share of problems, and more than their share of successes.

However, toward the last part of the book the story takes a dramatic turn to what I consider the “sinister” aspects of the Koch brothers that have become evident since around the time that Obama took office, and that has escalated ever since. For the past 60 or 70 years their guiding philosophy with regard with the role of government is that there should be no role. In their stated opinions, anything that the government does can only turn out to be bad. Bad for industry and bad for everyone else. At around the year 2010 they seem to have decided to use their great wealth to do whatever they can to achieve this philosophy – doing whatever they can to destroy and eliminate government and the regulations that come with it.

I found this to be quite thought provoking. They seem to have embraced “the American Dream” using the approaches espoused by the “brains” in universities. They found that the techniques work – but it is clear that they work in an extremely heartless way that only results in wealth and power for the business enterprise, without consideration to collateral damage to individuals or Society. They managed to garner great wealth, but they also seem to have left a great swath of destruction behind them – not the least is caused by their insistence that green house gases are not a problem, and that the global warming is hoax. They have pushed this so hard, for so long, in so many different ways that we are in a very real existential threat because of lack of belief and inaction. The Kocks are a major reason why we have been unable to settle down and do what is necessary to prevent the likely highly destructive future. They got theirs, now the future can get whatever is left.

Now they are wielding their wealth and power to transform the American way of politics and with it the American way of life. So now we all have a major problem on our hands. How do we manage our financial and power systems in ways that benefit all, and how do we prevent wealthy individuals and corporations from destroying the “American Experiment?” It looks to me like the experiment is being pushed toward failure by a few people that managed to accumulate great wealth are dead set upon getting it their way. My final opinion is that the “American Way” will always fail unless it has sufficient controls. Uncontrolled growth, uncontrolled monopolies, and uncontrolled greed will keep popping up “winners” who get all of the marbles, usually from “accidents” and situations that come about in an almost random way. Sometimes these random events result in “success” – resulting in the lucky ones thinking that they were the cause of their success. Therefore they come to believe that they are all knowing and all powerful.