Charles Koch has come up with a philosophy of business he calls Market-Based Management, which he argues is 'the ultimate solution for running a prosperous business,' and perhaps even for operating entire societies. One of the privately-held corporations named in that book was Koch Industries, so when Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America was published this year, I thought it would be important to find out more about their business and how they are affecting our country and our government-heck, our everyday lives and the environment-by the influence created with their billions of dollars.Ĭhristopher Leonard's book is a very well-researched, in depth look at all aspects of the Koch family and their business acquisitions, investments, dealings, and machinations over the years. It was very eye opening about the role big money is playing in politics.
I read Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right shortly after the 2016 election. If you want to understand how we killed the unions in this country, how we widened the income divide, stalled progress on climate change, and how our corporations bought the influence industry, all you have to do is read this book. These strategies made him and his brother David together richer than Bill Gates.īut there’s another side to this story. He’s a genius businessman: patient with earnings, able to learn from his mistakes, determined that his employees develop a reverence for free-market ruthlessness, and a master disrupter. But few people know much about Koch Industries and that’s because the billionaire Koch brothers have wanted it that way.įor five decades, CEO Charles Koch has kept Koch Industries quietly operating in deepest secrecy, with a view toward very, very long-term profits. Koch is everywhere: from the fertilizers that make our food to the chemicals that make our pipes to the synthetics that make our carpets and diapers to the Wall Street trading in all these commodities. The annual revenue of Koch Industries is bigger than that of Goldman Sachs, Facebook, and US Steel combined. Christopher Leonard’s Kochland uses the extraordinary account of how one of the biggest private companies in the world grew to be that big to tell the story of modern corporate America.
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