Charles Koch: The only reason you should be allowed to make money and be so successful is ...

if you're creating value for others, if you're helping people improve their lives. If you're just in there manipulating the system, get rid of you.

You may be familiar with the Freakonomics podcast by Stephen Dubner. Dubner is the author of the Freakonomics (2005) and SuperFreakonomics (2009). He is often an obvious statist, an unapologetic Keynsian, at least in his opinions, but he is also a great and balanced reporter, and he recently tackled one of the most toxic subjects in popular finance: the (alleged) Koch Cartel.

Over two episodes (one and two), Dubner interviews Charles Koch, one of the two (of four) Koch brothers who has infamously been denounced by virtually every liberal writer. The Kochs do play politics, and they do it flagrantly, in secret. They are responsible for a lot of really bad politicians, and their money has sponsored policies which actually do damage to our economy (corporate welfare). For his part, Koch hates that aspect of it. The problem with political donations is that they’re just donations. You don’t actually own the talking head, and Koch is in the minority when it comes to rich people opposed to corporate welfare.

Koch is a market libertarian. He believes that your economy is broken if it is almost wholly reliant on the success or failure of the government and that companies, or even entire industries, which refuse to get off the tit should go to the grave.

One hopes that most reading these words agree with this. Every dollar the government spends propping up bad business models is a dollar people could have kept or used to start businesses with good ones.

The widespread astroturfing and hatred towards the Koch brothers is out of proportion. As he points out throughout his interview, some of the croniest fucks in business, finance, and government are heralded as near-saints by many of the same critics. Koch is also often misrepresented by people in his sphere, such as the other day from the Huffington Post:

Koch Brothers’ Groups Criticize GOP Senate Health Care Bill For Not Being Conservative Enough

Notice that the Koch brothers themselves haven’t said a lot about it. For his part, Koch believes that our population needs to be healthy in order to compete globally. He also believes that government involvement in the medical system tends to drive up costs, and with our system, it’s not incorrect to say that. Given the chance and a few blind eyes, billings get far more out of control when the incentive is to process claims instead of validate, then process claims which is more likely to happen when private money is on the line.

If you want to be surprised like I was regarding Mr. Koch, I strongly recommend putting down your pitchforks and checking these podcasts out.