‘Kochland’ Measures the Reach of a Politically Influential Corporate Giant

Once again, progressives' views of NON-progressive become strained and far too shallow. The things the Koch family want hardly line up with conservatism or even the Republican Party. They are certainly libertarian to start with, but then the family moves toward progressivism more often than you will hear from the hate-Trump media world. When it comes to specific issues local or national, the Political Right has learned to keep the Kochs at arm's length. When I was a liberal, people like this were supposed to scare me, but life shows you that almost nobody perfectly fits any description carved out by the media.

This sounds like an important though minor addition to the books touching on the Kochs. It illuminates, from the example given of how workers are treated, the unblinking, devoid of humanism capitalist libertarian world view that Charles Koch in underwriting. If you want the real, exhaustive, in-depth, and chilling account, read Democracy in Chains. It is, quite honestly, a must read. Nothing will lay out better the fact that what we are facing from the far libertarian right, is a relentless, well-planned and long-planned, well-executed and exceptionally intentional dismantling of democracy. What may have seemed scattershot outrages against our way of conducting government and public affairs, is far from scattershot. Koch believes it, Koch is funding it, but it is a far wider network with a host of philosophers, tacticians, and leaders pre-dating Koch. I do not mind blaming things on Koch because his money is essential, as is the vision he shares with others (because he is not just a right wing philanthropist, he is an avid idealogue) but sometimes it is a mistake to see it as just one person.

its scary how a few people think they are better then the rest of us, because they have billions and can buy influence, which they do, and use that power to dictate to the sentors,congressmen and even the president what they want.... they have used their clout on many matters, global warming to name one; because it was against THEIR interests.The republican party wish to destroy Social Security and Medicare is another sign that the Koch's desires are being listened to and being worked on... this is a real danger to any hopes of democracy .....

Much of the recent damage to our country, and the planet via climate change, can be traced back to the Koch bro. Their creativity and great wealth joined Murdoch's curse of fox propaganda to nullify much of the progress our society seemed to be making when Obama and a democratic congress was elected. I believe much of what we call "evil" is just profound ignorance but the Koch bro. had fine minds, understood science and yet they've turned their back on science and chose to destroy what little defense we have against the coming climate catastrophe. The novel, "Sophie's Choice", by Styron, proposes the greatest evil comes from those with great talent, even good intentions who once turned and caught up in an orgy of insanity and cruelty actually make the greatest evil. That is the only explanation I can think of for these 2 old oligarchs. A tragedy for all of us.

The joke among Koch employees is that the acronym MBM (which Charles Koch uses in his book "Market-Based Management") stands for "make the brothers money."

I think if the Koch family continues to have their way and call so many shots, the title for a sequel to this book should be called "Brokeland" because that's the direction this country seems to be heading.

My dear Jennifer Szalai, I can't believe you go through your entire review without once mentioning the new, post-dating of the Koch war for Climate Change Denial.. Why? How? Here is a review you should read: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought

The Koch Brothers think they should rule the country with their uber-conservative old white men mentality. They obviously are good businessmen but they want in the ethical and social awareness categories. They want less government but want to have control over it.

I was offered a position with Koch Industries coming out of business school in the late 90s. The interview process was tough: eight interviews in eight hours with no breaks. The interviewers all looked the same - hearty, white, 30s, perfectly groomed, overwhelmingly male (only one woman) and very earnest about the company culture. Every employee carried a card with the Koch values and was expected to produce it if asked. I decided the nearly cult-like atmosphere was not for me. As I’ve learned more about the company and its political maneuvering I’ve become convinced that turning down that job was one of the best decisions I ever made!

I attended a think tank seminar last year addressing prison reform. One of the many guest speakers was a high level EVP representative from Koch Industries and Cory Booker the presidential candidate (prior to his announcement that he was running for president) they were addressing prison reform. Mr. Booker spoke about working with Jared and their concern about prisons. They did not mention for profit prisons which NJ has a high number of. I am sure that Jared's father had a very different experience than the high number of minority men have in prison on a daily basis. the EVP from the Koch Industry spoke about the money they had devoted into prison research. Granted I have a simple mind and was looking for measurable solutions ,that was not the case. At the end of the meeting I still didn't know what was in the reform package that Mr. Booker had been involved in nor did I know what the Koch brothers were actually working on . I found it to be an opportunity to promote themselves . This article doesn't shed much light on the current inner workings of this organization. Its secretive and probably exploiting the loopholes in the legal and political system. They have been successful in making a great deal of money with the support of Trump and his tax cut. Besides promoting the book I am not sure why this article was written

I heard Chris Leonard on the radio yesterday. His account of how Koch Industries work, and the damage they do, is scary. Central to their whole business model is the capture of the government at state and federal levels, to deregulate business in every way possible, while enacting laws (pre-written by Koch think-tanks) favorable to Koch business interests. A sophisticated organizational model prevents bankruptcies at Koch-owned corporations from paying off debts to creditors with money from the Koch billions.

"Kochland" - another stunning summer light read . . . In all seriousness, I plan on purchasing this book today. I think it will be illuminating and will provide a serious and in depth landscape of how and why this country is running in the direction that it is. I also think it will be a very heavy and dark read, but one that must be tackled in order to obtain the necessary background needed to understand why so much harm and damage is being done in this country only so a very few can profit. Thanks for the great review Ms. Szalai.

Atlas Shrugged

"Leonard races over the company’s founding in Wichita, Kan., by Fred Sr. in 1940, ..." I guess he didn't want to talk about Fred supporting communism and getting his money from Joseph Stalin. Fred didn't start in Wichita, before that he made refineries in communist USSR for Stalin. After that episode he wrote a cheesy book where he was "shocked!", shocked he wrote, that communists were bad people. He was shocked all the way to the bank.

Certainly the author covered the 1930's when the father, Fred's business dealings with both Hitler and Stalin, building oil refineries, selling grain... Given Russia's long-play -----

Pssst... Charles – you there??? Small modular reactor industry's been looking for its Alex Bell or Tom Edison or Steve Jobs... 2nd-generation – OK, too... E.g. Edsel, or Tom Jr... JR looked at the chip industry in an expansive way... Potato chips – memory chips... Whatever – there’s money to be made... You guys are already in the energy business... Pssst... Charles – if you decide to do this, don’t tell anyone... It’ll just be our secret... If anyone asks where all the juice is coming from – tell them it’s from underground windmills or dark-energy solar cells... That'd probably even garner some subsidies... Bye...

The result: two boring old men sitting in an appartement on park ave, just around the corner from Jeff Epstein, counting their money. Free pursuit of happiness.

This review fails to mention that Fred Koch was a co-founder of the John Birch Society. I just went to Amazon to check whether the book was also silent on this badge of shame. It was not, although it did not have much to say about this (only one hit in the book), which makes me far less likely to purchase this book than Jane Mayer's (which had 24) That said, I experienced a certain schaudenfreude as I read the account of Fred's death in a duck blind: "According to Koch family lore, Fred Koch aimed his weapon at the sky, took a shot, and then marveled at his marksmanship when a duck came wheeling down." As we used to say in the 60s, "Instant Karma." Sorry for the duck, though.

Yesterday's Fresh Air broadcast on NPR featured an interview by Terry Gross with the book's author. Fascinating, and frightening, look at Koch - well worth the listen.

Only one way to stop the Koch's push to remake our democracy into their twisted, dark, dystopian vision: Campaign Finance Reform.

Koch buys politicians as most of us would buy our lunch. One might say he is the puppet master behind the easily influenced, and not very bright front men.

"It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money" -- Bernstein, Citizen Kane.

"The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them." " It is through this lens of bureaucracy (which she calls “the rule of Nobody”) as a weapon of totalitarianism that Arendt arrives at her notion of “the banality of evil” — a banality reflected in Eichmann himself, who embodied “the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them.” " https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/07/hannah-arendt-the-banality-of-evil/

Note my address. They OWN Kansas, to the detriment of everyone except themselves. Not hyperbole, just twenty years of observation. In a previous life, they were Slave owners and traders. Seriously.

"It now imprints upon employees the need for “10,000 percent compliance”: obeying 100 percent of the laws 100 percent of the time." Hogwash. Having competed with them in the past, we were surprised at their success - until we realized that their environmental compliance costs were essentially zero-unless-caught, which was rare. Their scurrilous, defamatory treatment of uber-journalist Jane Mayer to discourage her reportage tells you all you need to know about the dark soul of the Kochtopus. As 'tis said: "when somebody shows you who they really are - believe them."

frightening is the word that comes to mind. thank you for this book review. the need to have a job and an income to support oneself and family keeps the workers captive. frightening.

I'm halfway through this excellent book. I'm terrified of the dark, dystopian world the Koch brothers are selfishly driving us towards. However, three words could easily stop our democracy from being contorted into their twisted vision: Campaign Finance Reform.

If this planet is to survive, the "rationally ordered universe" that served only 2 people must be radically improved to serve everyone, with nobody being "exhausted and degraded" as a result. In the coming 20 years or so, this means a new permanent international progressivism and the passing of these 2 brothers and those of their ilk.

I heard the author talking about his book with Terry Gross yesterday. A frightening look into the dark side of capitalism. And of course, dark money. This is also the machine that has designed a successful campaign against climate science and climate change - and a successful one at that. Thank-you for the article

While reading this article, the first thought that came to mind is Lord Acton's famous phrase, "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." While applicable here, Koch Industries is only one of a vast array of corporate power brokers, each seeking to advance their own interests. And there's the rub. By "advancing their own interests", something corporate America is very good at, advancing the public interest is too often ill-served. In my lifetime, Ralph Nader, and later, Elizabeth Warren have been the most effective voices in sounding the alarm over the out-sized influence corporate America has over public policy. But Mr. Nader, upon having amassed a power base himself, degenerated into running for President every four years as a fringe candidate, and irrelevance, except for siphoning off enough votes to hand the 2000 election to George W. Bush. That leaves Sen. Warren, ironically, also running for President, but as a Democrat. It makes me wonder. If political power is necessary to effect change, how do we guard against power's corrupting influence? My only answer is through a system of checks and balances, holding those wielding power accountable for their actions. Yes, the Constitution of the United States was designed for just that purpose, but is presently under attack. We'll know how our present attack on these principles turns out on November 3, 2020. Voting is the last check we have in our arsenal. Please use it wisely.

My Thanks to Ms. Szalai for writing this review because I won't be reading it. Not because I doubt her reaction to it; it's because I don't. Right now, there's enough to feel bad about. It's been apparent to me for awhile now that, given, voter suppression, de-regulation, the tax cuts for the Kochs, wage stagnancy and a well-spring of other hostile acts towards workers, the US isn't for us, the masses. It's the Plutocrat's US. The rest of us just get to barely exist within it.

So when do we deregulate the patent office and throw out intellectual property and copyright laws? That would enforce market based competition driving costs down and allow employees to compete against employers. Funny how the wealthy see market based rewards for labor as simply refined shaming and punishment with no actual market based rewards for their increased productivity. They are gaining productivity through public shaming and intimidation which is all stick and no carrot. I would recommend anyone who works for these thugs to find another job. Any such upward mobility in such a company is accompanied by soul retching humiliation and betrayals of the conscious.

I actually had a hard time sleeping after I heard the Fresh Air interview for Kochland. He makes the point that the things we see as Trump initiatives are actually the Koch’s ideas being implemented The author shines a light on republican stances that didn’t make sense. Climate denialism, rollbacks in government regulation for the climate. I hear from my neighbor on a regular basis about the degradation the EPA, where she works. The Koch’s are patiently dismantling our government piece by piece. I guess they don’t have children? What will happen to our country and planet as a result of their enormous meddling in our politics and government. It seems they are almost solely responsible for the slow destruction of our country and the planet. No support for roads? Come on. Their company benefited from roads and government. Even rich people need to breath.

The reviewer neglects to mention Nancy MacLean's critical intellectual history of the Koch empire, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Prof MacLean's discovery of the contributions of James M. Buchanan to the Koch power strategy, so successfully enacted in the past four decades or so, was the centerpiece of her revelatory and compelling study. I trust this silence was an oversight and not deliberate exclusion--but one never can tell these days given the depth and breadth of the tentacles of the Koch empire (not wishing to disparage cephalopods).

Excellent reporting. As one of the "little" people, it also adds to belief that so many people have that democracy was high jacked years ago by people like the Koch brothers. My hope is that some day we - the people - can get the "swamp" brothers drained of people like the Kochs

I don't get this review at all. It tells me almost nothing about the book's approach. The headline leads me to believe I'll learn about how Koch Industries is using it's money to influence politics, but most of the information the reviewer talks about is related to other books written about the Kochs. Finally at the end the first real interesting tidbit and it has to do with micro-managing employees which frustrates them, which has nothing to do with politics. What is the point of this review?

Money that "talks" has long been able to influence or buy political favors. Those elected to or appointed to high office positions are often at least millionaires or they depend on the powerful wealthy for their success. If the needy depend on various kinds of "handouts," so do those ambitious for office and for seeking increased wealth once they leave office. In Frank Capra's motion picture "It's a Wonderful Life," recall the brief and memorable moment when George Bailey says, "I wish I had a million dollars!" Recall the screenwriter plots of Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and the too-neglected "Meet John Doe." The Koch insidiously masterful approach to psychological and political manipulation leading to billions in profits should be a lesson lurking in the dangers of money's eternal influence. The fictional George Bailey's wish could never come true. Meanwhile, back at the real-life ranch, money shouts (not just talks), "Come and get it!"

Fellow plutocrats will see in the Koch siblings merely hard-workers and 'winners' who chose to exercise their free speech. Thoughts of lucky, money-obsessed, economic predators who chose selfishness as an ideal will not enter their consciousness.

This book is definitely on my reading list. I've read the other 2 books mentioned in the article. The question is what can we do about it? Not buying the Koch produced paper towels and toilet paper doesn't make a dent. This company is insidious and secretive and quite successful in achieving their goals. More publicity about them is needed...they are dangerous.

Actually the statements in Market Based Management were never meant to motivate employees into being entrepreneurs. Group think was/is top rated in Kochworld. In theory performance was valued and rewarded, in reality performance was never good enough because metrics changed as one moved forward. Koch wants good little soldiers. I am not surprised the author didn't find memorable stories, because everybody who moves up in Koch industries is brainwashed. It is more a sect than a company.

The Central enigma is why an engineer who thinks math is 'easy' can't put two and two together. Climate Science is settled science, and the master of the biggest energy company in the world probably knows that. As for 100% compliance with the law, Koch has probably found that easier as his cohorts, (ALEC, et. al.) now write so many of them. "Telling this story as well as “Kochland” does is harder than it looks"...Really? I would think that telling the story of of this company would be incredibly hard. I think that the Koch empire deserves scrutiny beyond that of nearly any other business there is. This book, at least from this review, does not seem to be it, but then, if it were, we probably wouldn't be reading a review about it here.

interesting review, but your conclusion that the Koch business and political activity may result "in a place where anyone without a few billion to spare would actually want to live." seems to come out of nowhere. i dont see a word in the article that suggests this. should we assume that its an opinion that you brought to the table long before reading the book?

One lesson of this review is don't judge a book by its cover. The cover promises to gratify readers' populist paranoia about corporate secrecy and corporate power -- the tired cliches of the semi-educated left. The reality is much more prosaic and less sinister. The Kochs made their money the old-fashioned way. They were smart and hardworking (and doubtless lucky too). Szalai's unkind description is "banal." I suppose that if you can't make one insult stick you invent another. Better "banal" than "Svengali," I guess. None of this will deter the conspiracy theorists who will continue to peddle their fake wares. It never really was about the Kochs. It was about inventing suitable "villains" who would personify all that was most spine-chillingly evil about capitalism. The facts never got in the way of that propaganda. Many Americans were fooled by the conspiracy theorists. Worse, they actually wanted to be fooled. They put the ring through their own noses and let themselves be led around.