Others have pointed out various flaws in Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article attacking Charles and David Koch for their donations to various libertarian causes. But I think it would be helpful to outline her three biggest errors in one place: the false claim that the Kochs’ funding of libertarian organizations is somehow secret; the assertion that it it is part of a “pro-corporate agenda”; and the argument that the Kochs’ donations “dovetail with their economic interests.”
I. The Myth of a “Covert War.”
The title of Mayer’s piece is “The Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who are Waging a War Against Obama.” Throughout, she tries to insinuate that the Kochs’ efforts to fund various libertarian organizations are somehow secret or deceptive. In reality, there is nothing hidden about the Kochs’ efforts. They have openly funded a variety of libertarian and free market causes since the 1970s. The Kochs openly helped found the Cato Institute – the first prominent libertarian think thank – in 1977. David Koch was the Libertarian Party candidate for vice president in 1980, and they have publicly contributed to numerous libertarian organizations since then. Their role in doing so is open and well-known, and has been chronicled by many previous writers. In the late 1970s, conservatives at National Review worried that Koch funding would push libertarians away from anti-communism towards foreign policy isolationism – one of many indications that their role wasn’t hidden even back then. Brian Doherty has a length discussion of the Kochs’ efforts in his comprehensive 2006 history of the libertarian movement.
There is also nothing secret or unusual about the fact that the libertarian organizations the Kochs contribute to oppose many of Obama’s economic policies. Given the vast expansion of government entailed by Obama’s agenda, it would be surprising if libertarians reacted in any other way. In the same way, we (including most of the organizations the Kochs contribute to) also vocally opposed the GOP’s massive expansion of government in the Bush era (e.g. - this book by Cato’s Michael Tanner, and here). In sum, it is no secret that that Kochs support various libertarian organizations, and it is also no secret that these organizations are highly critical of Obama’s economic policies – often on much the same grounds as they previously attacked Bush’s.
Mayer cites some of this publicly available history in her piece. But her constant rhetoric of secrecy and covertness obscures the true nature of the Kochs’ role. She tries to make the perfectly normal activity of philanthropists openly giving to causes they support for ideological reasons seem shady and conspiratorial. “Covert Operations” makes for a better headline than the more accurate “Libertarian Philanthropists Continue Longstanding Pattern of Openly Donating to Causes they Support.”
II. The Myth of a “Pro-Corporate Agenda.”
Mayer claims that the Kochs’ support of libertarianism is part of a “pro-corporate agenda” intended to help business interests. Frank Rich makes an even cruder version of the same charge in his recent New York Times column. This is based on a simplistic and highly inaccurate equation of free markets with the interests of big business.
In reality, as economists since Adam Smith have often pointed out, business interests often benefit from government intervention. Large corporations routinely lobby for government subsidies, government contracts, regulations that suppress their competitors, tariffs that exclude foreign competition, porkbarrel spending, the use of eminent domain to transfer property to themselves, and so on. Most recently, big business interests have benefited from the bailouts of the banks and auto companies, and health insurance companies benefited from the “individual mandate” in Obama’s new health care bill, which is likely to give them considerable additional business. I criticized the equation of free markets and “pro-business” agendas in more detail here and here.
The Kochs and other libertarians could reasonably be accused of having a “pro-corporate” agenda if they supported government interventions that benefit big business even as they opposed those that do not. That is in fact the position taken by most business lobbyists and large corporations. The charge might have some bite if they simply ignored pro-corporate government interventions, criticizing only those that seem to help the poor. In reality, however, libertarians – including the Koch-supported organizations – have vocally and consistently opposed virtually every pro-corporate government intervention since the libertarian movement began. Libertarians were among the leading critics (sometimes almost the only critics) of all of the interventions I catalogued in the previous paragraph.
III. Do the Kochs’ Donations “Dovetail” With Their Business Interests?
To her credit, Mayer admits that the Kochs are, at least in large part, motivated by ideological commitment rather than narrow self-interest alone. But she also contends that their donations and ideology “dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.” It is undoubtedly true that there are some issues where libertarian policies would benefit the Kochs financially. That, however, is hardly compelling evidence. Libertarianism is an ideology with implications for a wide range of policy issues. Some of these are likely to correlate with the business interests of any large business just by random chance. Had the Kochs funded a wide range of liberal organizations instead, Mayer could have easily found some correlations with their interests too. As Todd Zywicki points out, many of the libertarian causes the Kochs support have no conceivable connection to any financial interest of theirs (e.g. – drug legalization, curbing police abuses, school choice, increasing protection for the rights of criminal defendants).
Even more telling, some of these causes actually cut against the Kochs’ interests. Todd mentions the case of the auto bailouts. Government subsidization of the auto industry surely benefits oil companies such as Koch Industries. An example from my own field of expertise is the protection of property rights against eminent domain. Oil companies often benefit from takings (see here and here for recent examples). Yet the Cato Institute, the Institute for Justice, and many of the other groups the Kochs fund are among the leading critics of eminent domain. Cato’s Regulation magazine even recently published an article urging property rights activists to focus more attention on oil company takings (the article also notes that Institute for Justice-supported reforms have helped curb such takings already, but argues that IJ has not focused on the issue enough).
These three errors are the most important flaws of Mayer’s piece. But there are also various smaller ones. For example, as Ed Lasky shows, Mayer uncritically and incorrectly accepts claims that liberal philanthropist George Soros only supports causes unrelated to his economic interests. I don’t agree with Lasky’s assertion that Soros’ giving is mainly motivated by a desire to “use his billions to make more billions by tapping his friends in high places in the Democratic Party.” Just as the Kochs support many libertarian causes unrelated to their interests, Soros supports many liberal causes unrelated to his. But it’s clear that some of the causes Soros supports are also likely to benefit him. Mayer also incorrectly describes the Bill of Rights Institute (for which I have done some consulting work) as a group that “promotes a conservative slant on the Constitution.”
Much of Mayer’s article covers issues that I’m not familiar with. So I don’t know whether those parts are accurate or not. But her errors on subjects that I do know something about don’t fill me with confidence in the reliability of the rest of her work.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST WATCH: I am an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute (an unpaid position). I have also done work for the Institute for Justice, Cato, and a couple other organizations that the Kochs donate to. Much of this work was pro bono, while in some cases I received small payments (Gven the vastly greater amount of research funds available from liberal foundations, I could almost certainly have gotten as much or more from liberal funders had I been a left-wing academic). I suppose I should also mention that I have published articles in journals and spoken at conferences sponsored by organizations that got some of their funding from George Soros.
UPDATE: Some commenters seem to be under the impression that libertarianism is “pro-corporate” so long as corporations derive any significant benefit at all from libertarian policies. By that standard, of course, almost any ideology short of socialism is pro-corporate. After all, many corporations benefit from various liberal, conservative, and moderate policies too. A consistent “pro-corporate agenda” cannot merely be one that benefits some corporations sometimes. It would favor corporations across the board, including in cases where their interests are best served by government intervention. To put it a different way, one could use the same kind of “logic” to argue that the ACLU’s agenda is “pro-criminal” on the grounds that a significant number of criminals are likely to benefit from the ACLU’s efforts to limit police abuses and increase procedural protections for suspects.
Mark Field says:
I don’t know enough to comment about your point #3, but #1 and #2 strike me as weak.
The word “secret” has a range of meanings from “unknown by anyone” to “not publicized”. Here’s the definition from M-W:
1 a. 1 kept from knowledge or view : hidden b. marked by the habit of discretion : closemouthed c. working with hidden aims or methods : undercover – a ∼ agent d. not acknowledged : unavowed – a ∼ bride e. conducted in secret – a ∼ trial
2. remote from human frequentation or notice : secluded
3. revealed only to the initiated : esoteric
4. designed to elude observation or detection – a ∼ panel
Mayer’s use of the term fits pretty well within 1 b or 1 c, and could even fit 3.
As for whether libertarianism serves a pro-corporate agenda, that depends on your ideology. Those of us who are not libertarians think it does so. You obviously don’t. That doesn’t make Mayer wrong, except at the end of an extended argument which I doubt would convince most Americans (since most certainly are not libertarians).
September 2, 2010, 10:59 pmKevin! says:
The idea that Fountainhead-style Social Corporatism is the real interest of billionaires like the Kochs is frankly dumb. The interests of billionaires are: low taxes, low social expenditure on services they never use, and a free hand in labor, the environment, etc.
It’s telling that Somin has to depend on ideological abstraction for point 2. It’s easy to show the congruence between libertarianism and the logical interests of billionaire business owners. Why not make the better argument that these interests are good for society as a whole?
If libertarianism doesn’t benefit billionaires more then sucking at the government teat, then who could it possibly appeal to?
September 2, 2010, 11:00 pmMark Field says:
Ok, the html is doing weird things. The italics in my comment should end after item 4 of the definition, but I can’t get it to work.
September 2, 2010, 11:02 pmmaterialist says:
Thanks for a cogent defense of a couple of basically good people who are exercising their rights to make their political opinions known to their fellow citizens.
Such a delightful break from the slime of Soros!
September 2, 2010, 11:02 pmKazinski says:
You don’t address Mayer’s primary argument that the while she disagrees with the Koch’s worldview, she mainly agrees with Soros’. Until you can convince her that the Koch’s have a correct view of the issues then you will not be able to change her belief that their contributions are sinister.
September 2, 2010, 11:07 pmErik says:
As to #1: Ask anybody off the street if they know who the Kochs are, and I wager that 98/100 (At least) will have no idea. Ask anybody off the street if they know who George Soros is, and a substantial majority will link him to the funding of liberal causes. Does this make the Kochs funding a “secret”? According to dictionary.com: “1) done, made, or conducted without the knowledge of others: secret negotiations.” Sounds like a secret to me.
As to #2: The bailouts did not necessarily have a per se pro-corporate effect. What about Lehman? WaMu? Merrill? It seems like the bailouts targeted specific firms and left others out to dry. Let’s not forget about the prevention of another depression and thus the pro-middle class, even pro-America rationale for the bailouts. To say that they were strictly “pro-corporate” is an over-simplification.
As to #3: Your main point appears to be that because not ALL of the Koch’s business interests are positively affected by their donations, there is no cause for concern. Further, because the Kochs helped found the CATO institute which opposes eminent domain and because eminent domain is perhaps at odds with Koch Industries, then this should raise doubts about Mayer’s claim. This seems attenuated at best.
September 2, 2010, 11:11 pmCalderon says:
I’ve already spent too much time on this, but some brief comments on the supposed “secrecy” arguments.
Erik says:
I really doubt, “a substantial majority” of people off the street know who Soros is; I’d bet it’s less than 15%. Setting that aside, the number of people that know about an entity is a ridiculous way of telling whether it’s secret. By that measure, Cravath Swaine & Moore, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Covington & Burling are all huge secrets, since probably less than 2% of people off the street know what those names means. Hell, under your standard, who sits on the Supreme Court, most cabinet members, the head of every federal agency, and numerous other obviously public information is “secret.” Which indicates your standard is wrong.
Mark Field says:
b. marked by the habit of discretion : closemouthed c. working with hidden aims or methods : undercover — a ∼ agent
Except there’s nothing discrete or hidden about the Koch’s funding of libertarian organizations. As Ilya points out, their support of these organizations is an open and obvious fact.
September 2, 2010, 11:25 pmMark Field says:
It may be known to cognoscenti, but not to most people. I think I can fairly describe myself as reasonably informed on political issues (even if I do spend an inordinate amount of time in the 18th C), but I’d never heard of the Kochs until the recent posts here. For someone in my situation, the Kochs’ funding was “secret” in at least some of the senses above.
September 2, 2010, 11:40 pmErik says:
Calderon- let me clarify my point: what is characterized as a secret is often a function of the publicity given to the particular subject matter and indirectly the actual public awareness of that matter. Fox News never mentions the Kochs. In fact, hardly any other news outlets do. Soros, on the other hand, is a buzzword for the “elitist liberal agenda” in many media outlets and in the blogosphere. What is the line between what is a secret and what is unknown? Are the reasons for why something is unknown affect how we distinguish what is “secret” from what is simply “unknown”? Finally, should the subject matter affect the distinction between the two? For example: if Cravath was a terrorist organization, then it is likely a safe conclusion that is was kept a secret.
September 2, 2010, 11:45 pmrpt says:
1. I’ve never seen such fawning about Soros or anyone of substantial wealth on the alleged “left” as the Zywicki and now Somin pieces (including the mandatory personal affiliations). What compels such passionate defense of people who are beyond the reach of wants, needs and the law (as they have bragged)?
2. What can we now expect after the VC posters read the Palin piece in Vanity Fair? Perhaps they won’t read it because she has called it “limp” and “impotent” (Todd had better beware, or is she projecting?).
September 2, 2010, 11:50 pmKamal says:
Regarding Myth II, I read a lot of progressive blogs (shocker, I know) and the main contention is not that the Kochs act solely in their own interests at the expense of any ideology, but rather that their ideology is inherently laizze-faire, which progressives see as protecting the current power distribution that they feel serves the people in a negative way.
Yes, government intervention can help large corporations, but laizze-faire virtually guarantees their survival. There isn’t some hidden resources we can find and start exploiting ourselves; everything is owned already which makes those who have nothing slaves to those who do. They *must* work for someone else to survive. Their is no other choice any-longer.. we can’t just take off, build a home for ourselves and life off the land – it’s all gone! That is the progressive argument.. laizze-faire is a noble freedom-preserving philosophy when you have possible independence. When possible independence is eliminated, laizze-faire economics enable slavery. I don’t mean to use that term lightly… and I mean it in the sense that someone is forced to work for someone else to survive and not in the sense of them being property. If someone can explain how someone born to unfortunate circumstance can make a life for themselves in America independent from society or another human being, like they once could, please.. let me know. I was a conservative for most of my life.. and this is the main issue I can’t get past.
September 2, 2010, 11:55 pmCalderon says:
The standard of knowing about a subject but having never heard of something does not mean that something was secret. I’ve read a lot of books on Roman, medieval, and Nazi history, and consider myself generally knowledgeable about those issues. Yet every time I read a new book on those topics, I learn new stuff I had never heard of before. Surely that does not mean the information was “secret” in any meaningful sense of the term — indeed, it was published in freely available books. Instead, all my not knowing the information means is … I didn’t know it.
“It may be known to cognoscenti, but not to most people” is an even worse standard, for the same reasons as my reply to Erik. Only chemists know the 73rd element on the periodic table, but that doesn’t mean it’s a secret. Only Edgar Allan Poe scholars or harcore aficionadoes know the words to “Conqueror Worm,” but again, the words to that poem are not a secret. Information about what organizations the Kochs had founded and/or funded was publicly available to anyone who bothered to look, had been for decades, and thus was not secret.
September 2, 2010, 11:55 pmIlya Somin says:
1. I’ve never seen such fawning about Soros or anyone of substantial wealth on the alleged “left” as the Zywicki and now Somin pieces (including the mandatory personal affiliations). What compels such passionate defense of people who are beyond the reach of wants, needs and the law (as they have bragged)?
I don’t think that pointing out that Soros’ donations are motivated by ideology (an ideology that I, BTW, think is mostly wrong) counts as “fawning” over him.
September 2, 2010, 11:56 pmIlya Somin says:
The idea that Fountainhead-style Social Corporatism is the real interest of billionaires like the Kochs is frankly dumb. The interests of billionaires are: low taxes, low social expenditure on services they never use, and a free hand in labor, the environment, etc.
My point is that corporations have many interests, some of which involve government intervention and others that don’t. A “pro-corporate agenda’ worthy of the name would support their interests across the board, not just in those cases where they coincide with free markets. And it certainly wouldn’t support free markets in cases where they actively cut against corporate interests.
September 2, 2010, 11:58 pmKazinski says:
There is no doubt the Kochs have a lower profile than Soros, after all the Kochs are just industrialists, Soros was the subject of a official statement by ASEAN:
And while the statement did not mention Soros name Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad certainly did:
I don’t have any opinion on the truth of the charges, but being blamed for a currency crises that plunged a whole region of the world into a recession and caused misery for millions is certainly enough to gather some name recognition. And once your name is in the public sphere like that, it is harder to escape public notice of your public activities.
Add to that the fact that Soros has been much more involved in the financing of organizations that are very active in the election cycle and partisan politics, rather than think tanks espousing a political philosophy that is not warmly embraced by either major political party, I think you will have a more than adequate explanation why George Soros’s activities get more attention than the Koch brothers.
September 2, 2010, 11:59 pmIlya Somin says:
The bailouts did not necessarily have a per se pro-corporate effect. What about Lehman? WaMu? Merrill? It seems like the bailouts targeted specific firms and left others out to dry. Let’s not forget about the prevention of another depression and thus the pro-middle class, even pro-America rationale for the bailouts. To say that they were strictly “pro-corporate” is an over-simplification.
The fact that not every corporation got bailed out doesn’t mean they aren’t “pro-corporate.” By that standard, the policies that Mayer points to as pro-corporate (e.g. – opposing anti-global warming measures) are pro-corporate either, since some corporations (e.g. – manufacturers of “green” technologies) benefit from them. As for the possibility of bailouts benefiting the middle class and preventing a depression, I obviously disagree. But the point I was making is simply that corporations greatly benefited from them. That’s true even if others benefited as well. If a “pro-corporate” policy is one that no one but corporations benefits from, then it’s virtually a null set. Certainly pro-oil company policies wouldn’t qualify, since oil workers and many oil consumers benefit from them, as well as corporate stockholders.
September 3, 2010, 12:02 amTim says:
I think he’s accusing you of fawning over the Kochs, while stating that he’s never seen fawning of that sort directed at Soros.
September 3, 2010, 12:02 amKamal says:
Not necessarily. Hypothetically ,if they are completely self-interested (which is a strawman argument and I hope you see that) they could support free market ideas if they knew they were unlikely to pass (most Americans aren’t libertarian) but would increase their credibility.
September 3, 2010, 12:03 amIlya Somin says:
As to #3: Your main point appears to be that because not ALL of the Koch’s business interests are positively affected by their donations, there is no cause for concern. Further, because the Kochs helped found the CATO institute which opposes eminent domain and because eminent domain is perhaps at odds with Koch Industries, then this should raise doubts about Mayer’s claim.
No, my point is that most of the work the Kochs fund has no connection to their business interests, and some actively cuts against it. Thus, it is inaccurate to claim that their donations “dovetail” with their business interests, unless you want to claim that any coincidence whatsoever counts as “dovetailing,” by which standard Soros and virtually every other philanthropist who donates to broad ideological causes could be condemned as well.
September 3, 2010, 12:04 amKamal says:
And if you recognize that corporations benefiting from something doesn’t exclude them from benefiting more from something that’s unlikely to become policy, that point seems fairly moot.
September 3, 2010, 12:05 amIlya Somin says:
As for whether libertarianism serves a pro-corporate agenda, that depends on your ideology. Those of us who are not libertarians think it does so.
You can, of course, think whatever you want. But a “pro-corporate agenda” is one that either benefits corporations across the board or is deliberately designed to do so. Libertarianism is pretty obviously neither, given that it runs counter to corporate interests in many very obvious ways. That’s true even if libertarianism is also foolish, wrongheaded, poorly argued, etc.
September 3, 2010, 12:08 amCornellian says:
By that measure, Cravath Swaine & Moore, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Covington & Burling are all huge secrets, since probably less than 2% of people off the street know what those names means. Hell, under your standard, who sits on the Supreme Court, most cabinet members, the head of every federal agency, and numerous other obviously public information is “secret.”
Reminds me of a survey I saw some years ago in which 1/3 of Americans surveyed couldn’t name the sitting Vice-President of the United States, even though he was in his second term in office. People around places like VC sometimes vastly overestimate the level of political interest in the population at large.
September 3, 2010, 12:11 amArthur Kirkland says:
Charles and David Koch for their donations to various libertarian causes
Unless one’s perspective is skewed to the extent that the Heritage Foundation appears to be a libertarian organization, that description is inapt.
September 3, 2010, 12:13 amLibertarian1 says:
David ran for Vice-President of the United States in 1980 and received 921,000 votes. If you never heard of him I don’t think the blame lies with him.
September 3, 2010, 12:18 amArthur Kirkland says:
I find that point difficult to believe. When a company donates to an arts organization, for example, to curry favor with someone who (1) likes the organization and (2) can help the company, that donation has a connection to the company’s business interests. Bankrolling right-wing organizations furthers business interests when Republicans are able to influence government policy and purchasing.
September 3, 2010, 12:18 amMark Field says:
Well, nobody thinks she meant “secret” in the same sense that the nuclear launch codes are “secret”. But her use of the term, and my description, seem to me to fit comfortably within definitions 1 a-c.
The fact that you had to use the word “obvious” twice should be a clue that it’s not obvious at all. I don’t see any reason to debate libertarianism on this thread, but my view of it is that it’s “pretty obviously” both — it benefits corporations across the board and is designed to do so. In my view, it has no function beyond those. Much more is this the case for the phony “libertarianism” which advocates a rollback of government regulation in a few areas without instituting a full and complete libertarian system.
September 3, 2010, 12:19 amIlya Somin says:
Mark Field: The fact that you had to use the word “obvious” twice should be a clue that it’s not obvious at all. I don’t see any reason to debate libertarianism on this thread, but my view of it is that it’s “pretty obviously” both — it benefits corporations across the board and is designed to do so. In my view, it has no function beyond those. Much more is this the case for the phony “libertarianism” which advocates a rollback of government regulation in a few areas without instituting a full and complete libertarian system.
If you studied Cato and the other organizations the Kochs fund, I think it would pretty quickly become clear that they favor rolling back regulation in far, far more than just a few areas. As for the use of “obvious,” I continue to think that it’s obvious that corporations benefit from many types of government intervention, and that many libertarian policies (e.g. – drug legalization, reducing police abuses, etc.) have no meaningful connection to business interests.
September 3, 2010, 12:32 amGimlet says:
If they’re trying to be so secret, why do they have a foundation in their name – and why don’t they fund a 501(c)(3) with a surreptitious name, which would then fund the other libertarian causes? And why did they “allow” all of this indignation to defend their positions, given “secrecy” under definition 5z alpha is so important? Did everyone just not get the memo?
Also, what is “hidden” about avowedly libertarian organizations like Cato and Reason? Or, what is hidden about Heritage? Are there those who are under the misimpression that those are not ideological organizations?
The main issue that progressives and the author of the original piece seem to have is that the Kochs are promoting conservative/libertarian ideas.
September 3, 2010, 12:34 amHm. says:
Are you kidding me with this? One more post about this, and I’m going to be forced to take VC off my daily blog schedule.
Could these successive posts not have been simply _comments_ to the original post on Mayer’s article?
September 3, 2010, 12:40 amrpt says:
What I meant by the term fawning is embarrassingly obsequious praise linked with affiliation disclosure. I have not seen Soros supporters go so far over the top to semi-deify him in the manner you and TZ have done here in response to some really tepid commentary from Mayer.
September 3, 2010, 12:40 amrpt says:
Thank you. That’s exactly it. There is something creepy about it.
September 3, 2010, 12:45 amSuperSkeptic says:
Kamal,
I sympathize with your position. I’m often hung up on the property issue (but perhaps you would consider it from the “opposite” end of the spectrum), and it is one of the major reasons I’m not a doctrinaire “libertarian.” I am genuinely curious to know what progressive blogs you’d recommend.
September 3, 2010, 1:02 amKamal says:
My favorite: Ezra Klein – http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/
September 3, 2010, 1:34 amIlya Somin says:
I think he’s accusing you of fawning over the Kochs, while stating that he’s never seen fawning of that sort directed at Soros.
I don’t think it’s “fawning” to point out that the Kochs’ donations to libertarian causes are 1) not secret, 2) not part of a “pro-corporate agenda”, and 3) not consistently in line with their business interests. FWIW, I’m I’m perfectly willing to say all three of these things about Soros and most other big-name left-wing philanthropists (and actually did say it about Soros in this very post).
September 3, 2010, 2:58 amHm. says:
For me, personally, the ‘fawning’ comes from the fact that, in the past four days, there have been five posts made to refute one article critical of the Koch brothers.
It doesn’t help, really, when the authors of those posts need to include ‘full disclosure’ statements about their connections to groups who have received or are receiving money from the Kochs.
September 3, 2010, 3:44 amDilan Esper says:
Again, if your intention is to convince people that an article saying the financiers are pulling the strings is wrong, running five impassioned blog posts from three people over two days about how nobody could possibly question the motives of the financiers is not the way to do it.
September 3, 2010, 4:49 amThe Awful Truth says:
This seems like an extremely poor argument for progressivism.
You say that laissez faire virtually guarantees the survival of large corporations. How can you believe this? If the US was operating under a laissez faire system, GM, AIG and many banks would have gone bankrupt and many dissapeared altogether. Government intervention assured their survival.
A laisse faire system, or even system we had been operating in before 2008, is not static. large businesses go bust all the time. See Osborne Computer, People Express or Pan Am. If the post 2008 system continues then the current corporate structure will be largely frozen in place, because the government will step in to prop up any large enterprise that fails.
I doubt Obama believes that the problem with free enterprise is that it’s too static. He seems to believe its not static enough, and that its proclivity for destroying existing businesses comes at an excessive social cost. That’s a legitimate progressive argument. I don’t think your’s is.
As your second point that all the resources have been taken and anyone from a poor background is trapped into a life of “wage slavery”, again I’m baffled.
People from poor backgrounds establish small business everyday. They probably need to work for others to save enough to establish the business and to establish credit to borrow, but they’re not locked into working for others permanently. Look at your own neighborhood, do you think all the hair salons, dry cleaners, restaurants etc are owned by people with inherited wealth?
If you want to live off the land, save some money, borrow some, buy land and go for it.
Resources are not fixed and finite. They are created and expended every day. Most of the resources that will be in use 50 years from now don’t exist yet.
September 3, 2010, 5:07 amStephen Lathrop says:
Libertarianism is pretty obviously across the board pro-corporate. Its practitioners uniformly oppose state regulation of corporations, except in the unusual cases where that regulation is explicitly pro-libertarian. It is obvious libertarian policy to take from government any power to restrict corporate activity that harms ordinary people—if ordinary people instead of libertarians get to define what is harmful. That seems to apply across the board, and its intended result is overwhelmingly pro-corporate. Libertarian quibbles on that point serve only to marginalize their movement—they all amount to variations on the theme that ordinary people don’t know what’s good for them, which just reinforces opponents’ concerns.
The secrecy issue is far less complicated than presented by Somin. The left doesn’t like cats-paw policy initiatives. The right thinks they are just fine. There is a reason for that. One politically powerful critique of right wing policy is that it serves individual personal greed. You may disagree with that, but it is still in the interest of the right to defuse that critique by keeping the individuals out of sight, while presenting the policies as the fruit of pure reason.
For that reason, most liberals would be entirely comfortable with a regime in which policy initiatives funded by Soros were identified with his name. Maybe Soros would be okay with that too. But those on the right don’t want their funders to have to put a name to their initiatives. Arguments to the contrary from libertarians or right wingers will carry weight only when they are willing to get behind regulations requiring complete no-cutout disclosure of funding sources for election advertising, etc. Without such regulations, anyone is justified in thinking of personally funded policy initiatives as intentionally kept secret, whether they come from the right or the left, and whether or not sources are technically discoverable by someone doing research.
Politically, the issue isn’t what’s secret in the darkest sense of that term, it’s what is forthright and disclosed beyond the possibility of quibbles or misunderstanding. Only disclosure at that level has practical political meaning.
September 3, 2010, 5:34 amStephen Lathrop says:
Decades ago I ran a small business, a small town community newspaper in a rapidly growing community. Over the years I came to understand that many if not most of my newer advertising customers were in fact people starting small businesses using inherited wealth. I also came to understand that there was a notable difference in the credit worthiness of businesses run by those with inherited wealth and those run by people who had scraped their capital together. The latter were far more reliable.
September 3, 2010, 5:46 amThe Awful Truth says:
The issues here seem to be under two headings: secrecy and self interest.
Mayer seems to think anything that she didn’t know about qaulifies as secret. However, the Kochs funding is not only a matter of public record but is incredibly well known by anyone knowledgeable about libertarian and conservative politics. If Mayer knew anyone in conservative circles, she could have found out about the Kochs with a phone call. She obviously lacks the knowledge to be writing about politics professionally.
Mayer makes the argument that the Kochs are sinister and Soros isn’t because the Kochs giving is self interested and Soros’ isn’t. There are two problems with this:
1) Mayer has no way of knowing what Soros’ financial interests are. Soros is a trader, he makes large bets on currency movements and other financial trends based on his beliefs about the impact of government policies.
These positions are private (secret). Mayer doesn’t know what they are. So she has no way of knowing if Soros’ backing of the Dems is in support of his personal financial interests or not.
2) Mayers defintion of the corporate self interest is naive. The best way of finding out what the political self interest of corporations is by seeing how they actually behave politically. Almost all corporations expect favorable treatment for their donations. Lower taxes and regulations in general are nice but special tax breaks, regulatory changes, subsidies and government contracts for their companies are much more important.
If this weren’t true why would corporations donate to Democrats? But they do not donate heavily to the Dems, in recent years more heavily than to the Reps. When corporations donate to the Reps, it’s rarely (if ever) on a “help out business in general” basis. They want special treatment. Unfortunately, they usually get it.
If the Kochs appeared before any gathering of Fortune 500 CEOs, and urged them to focus their donations on libertarian causes for the benefit of free enterprise in general, they’d be laughed at.
I’m not worried or outraged by the Kochs and Soros’ political philanthropy.I am outraged that Goldman Sachs has gotten bailed out mulitple times by three different administrations in the last 18 years and that ADM is able to get ethanol subsidies.
Mayer’s journalism is incompetent. it’s like something a high school student might write.
September 3, 2010, 6:34 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
The second statement is true, but doesn’t support the first statement. Again, existing corporations do not — contrary to liberal myth — oppose regulation. They like regulation, as it creates barriers to entry for their competitors. A regulation I help write, from a purely financial perspective, is far to be preferred to an unregulated market. Take the way I already do things and make it mandatory, thus giving me a leg up on people who do those things differently.
September 3, 2010, 7:08 ammattski says:
That’s true. I think Kamal’s comments re laissez faire were a little hasty.
What I don’t think is controversial is that laissez faire a) benefits those with abundant resources at the expense of those with few and therefore b) exacerbates disparities in wealth.
There is a societal interest in mitigating wealth disparity, in my view.
September 3, 2010, 7:32 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
That isn’t controversial… among liberals. In fact, laissez faire prevents those with abundant resources from leveraging those resources to extract rents from the government at the expense of those with few.
And people wonder why liberals are accused of class warfare.
September 3, 2010, 7:53 amLongwalker says:
Regarding people with inherited wealth ending up in control of all economic resources : Prior to the establishment of government regulatory bodies, there was a saying in New England “shirtsleeves to shirtsleves in three generations.”
It was the common experience for a businessman to work hard and prosper, raise a son to be of the “gentry” who would live a life of indolence on his father’s capital and make the grandson, when the money ran out, begin at the bottom.
Then “family trusts” were invented. The wealth of the grandfather would be put into the trust and be managed by professionals. Income from the trusts would be available to the son but he would not be able to touch the capital.
Thus today, we have the Rockerfellers and the Kennedys and other wealthy families living on the protected inherited wealth of their forefathers.
One commenter noted that those with inherited wealth were less reliable financially that those who were making their own way. With financial support from a family trust, there is little need to establish a goodcredit record.
September 3, 2010, 7:56 amMartinned says:
Conservatives are accused of it, too, only they’re winning. (History is written by the victorious, etc.)
September 3, 2010, 8:12 amShag from Brookline says:
“Follow the money …” comes through loud and clear from Mayer’s article, including the recipient KOCH-HEADS at this Blog claiming errors in the article.
Ilya employs this red herring:
“To put it a different way, one could use the same kind of ‘logic’ to argue that the ACLU’s agenda is ‘pro-criminal’ on the grounds that a significant number of criminals are likely to benefit from the ACLU’s efforts to limit police abuses and increase procedural protections for suspects.”
to sniff away from Mayer’s trail of the KOCH bros. It should be pointed out that over the years an even greater number of persons wrongly accused of crimes benefit from such ACLU efforts, including corporate executives. (It’s time once again for the variation on the Village People’s “Y-M-C-A” with arms raised: “A-C-L-U”. I can’t hear you, Ilya!)
September 3, 2010, 8:13 amB.D. says:
I would say the case for calling the ACLU “pro-criminal” is even more persuasive than the case for calling libertarians “pro-corporate.” Both are absurd, incorrect caricatures.
September 3, 2010, 8:15 amMartinned says:
That’s only true if you define rents as government-provided rents. A formal definition, such as “the excess amount earned by a factor [of production] over the sum necessary to induce it to do its work” (Wessel (1967), 57 AER 1221), does not insist that the this “excess” is linked to the government somehow. Laissez-faire – by definition – reduces the scope for what we might call public rents, but at the cost of increasing the opportunities for private rents. In assessing the net economic effect of any shift towards laissez-faire, the question is also whether the rent in question represents a pure transfer payment, which is neutral as far as total value added is concerned, or a monopoly profit of some sort, which comes with a deadweight loss.
September 3, 2010, 8:17 amThe Awful Truth says:
I disagree with the “at the expense of the few” part of your statement. I don’t see economics as a zero sum gun. I also think the system we seem to be entering, an alliance between entrenched corporate interests and interventionist government is likely to produce a more unequal, more exploitive society. Countries where big business can keep it’s profits but socialize it’s risks often seem to end up looking like Brazil or 60-70s Italy.
Personally I think a better approach for the American left would be to acknowledge that the dynamism and wealth creation of free enterprise are good things, but that it can have negative impacts that the government should protect them from, and that some members of society are not well positioned to take advantage of it and should be assisted.
I’d probably oppose most specific liberal policies along these lines, but I’d try to judge them pragmatically according to their costs and benefits, and their likelihood of success, not dismiss them out of hand ideologically.
September 3, 2010, 8:20 amJason says:
Its not just one article in the New Yorker. In addition to the New York Times column, it seems that it has become a Blogosphere-wide meme to blame anything the left disagrees with on the secretive machinations of the Koch brothers. I suspect that this may have some legs.
September 3, 2010, 8:21 amMartinned says:
In each case, that depends on the intentions of the advocate. It is exactly the claim here that the libertarians under consideration in the article – the Koch brothers – intend to benefit economically from their philantropic activities. Whether that is true is not something I am in a position to assess, but I have to say I don’t find any of the rebuttals posted on VC so far particularly convincing.
Whether libertarianism is pro-corporate, for example, depends a great deal on which industry we’re talking about. The Kochs work in an industry where bailouts aren’t really an issue, but regulation is. So yes, in their case libertarianism dovetails with their economic interests. Whether libertarianism benefits corporations generally is besides the point.
September 3, 2010, 8:22 amJason says:
Its not just one article in the New Yorker. In addition to the New York Times column, it seems that it has become a Blogosphere-wide meme to blame anything the left disagrees with on the secretive machinations of the Koch brothers. I suspect that this may have some legs.
September 3, 2010, 8:23 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Such a claim would require, you know, evidence, not mere “pointing it out.” Given the ratio of innocent to guilty people arrested, it seems highly implausible.
September 3, 2010, 8:25 amBlue Neponset says:
I think that horrible horrible hypocrite Mayer must have hit the nail on the head to get this kind of reaction from you guys.
September 3, 2010, 8:26 amMartinned says:
What goes around (Soros), comes around (Koch).
But seriously, I read this “book” recently. It’s from 2004, and it’s full of accusations about the Koch brothers. So I hardly think this is a new development. It may be that this stuff has been kicked into a higher gear, though.
September 3, 2010, 8:28 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
I said “extracting rents from the government at the expense of the few,” which naturally refers to government-provided rents. As transactions not involving the government are voluntary rather than coerced, the rich cannot “extract” them “at the expense of” those with few assets. The rich must provide value in order to get money from the poor.
September 3, 2010, 8:29 amMartinned says:
First of all, this is a misconception that is most harmful to libertarians’ ability to communicate with the rest of society. If you don’t think a private monopolist can extract rents at the expense of its customers and potential customers, then you don’t have a common language for communication with the rest of society, or for access to economic science.
Secondly, the degree to which “extract” is the correct metaphor is irrelevant. Private rents cause deadweight losses, i.e. a quantifiable loss to society caused by sellers pricing over cost. This phenomenon might be justified in some cases (intellectual property) or inevitable (public utilities, usually), but it is undisputable that it exists. As such, I don’t see how one can dispute my characterisation of the problem as one of weighing public rents against private rents.
September 3, 2010, 8:44 amrpt says:
I read the Mayer article last night. The VC posts are really George Mason’s mandatory defense of their patron, since the article tells us that (1) The Kochs gave millions to GMU, and (2) they control all of their “investments” very carefully, and (3) if the recipients do not serve the Kochs’ interest, they pull the funds.
In the political realm there are two issues; (1) the use of fictitiously named astroturf entities like “Americans For Prosperity” to launder contributions and hide their own control and agenda, and (2) the expenditure of lobbying funds and political contributions to oppose the regulation of their own business activities. Thus the Koch polluters oppose the specific regulation of polluting industrial activities as well as the general proposition that pollution should be regulated; i.e. “ozone is good for you”. They oppose regulation which would inhibit their own activities.
September 3, 2010, 9:04 amalkali says:
The scenarios presented here as potential “errors” in Mayer’s piece are for the most part hypothetical or highly attentuated.
In her piece, Mayer pointed out that the Kochs operate oil refineries, and have opposed climate change regulation that would discourage use of oil. Mayer pointed out that the Kochs manufacture formaldehyde, and have opposed efforts to regulate its use. Those are pretty concrete examples.
Asserting the theoretical proposition that “sometimes being libertarian could mean being adverse to business interests” doesn’t disprove her points. In particular, the claim that the auto bailout benefited oil companies is a claim that I’ve never heard before, and I’m not aware that anyone in the oil business has ever expressed that view. (Nor does it make sense: it supposes that if the auto industry hadn’t been bailed out, that would have led to a substantial decrease in oil use, and yet no environmental group ever weighed in on that issue.)
September 3, 2010, 9:09 amByomtov says:
Ilya,
Todd mentions the case of the auto bailouts. Government subsidization of the auto industry surely benefits oil companies such as Koch Industries.
I cannot believe you buy into Zywicki’s argument on this. It’s utterly nonsensical. If that’s really the best you guys can do on the “conflicts with their own interests” issue you need to drop that one.
September 3, 2010, 9:14 amByomtov says:
To her credit, Mayer admits that the Kochs are, at least in large part, motivated by ideological commitment rather than narrow self-interest alone. But she also contends that their donations and ideology “dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.” It is undoubtedly true that there are some issues where libertarian policies would benefit the Kochs financially. That, however, is hardly compelling evidence.
Huh? Isn’t that exactly what she said?
September 3, 2010, 9:19 amCalderon says:
Mark Fields says:
The problem is she’s using “secret” and “covert” to refer to publicly available information that anyone who cares to could find out. Two quick points. First, suppose the government made no effort to hide the nuclear launch codes, the codes were freely available on the internet, an author had recently written a publicly available book called The Freewheeling History of Nuclear Missiles that included the codes, the codes were printed on annual Defense Department reports, and so on and so forth. Would you still consider the codes secret?
Second, Orin has a post a few below this one that talks about people trained in law knowing the context of authorities and knowing the relative importance of authorities and how to interpret them. Likewise, a user of the English language should be able to read a dictionary and know the context of the definitions. If taken literally, your definition of “secret” would apply to 99.999% of publicly available information. No actual user of the English language uses the term that way. Instead, in the actual language, the term secret is much more like the legal concept of a trade secret — requiring both that only a select group has the knowledge and that they make affirmative efforts to prevent disclosure of that knowledge to others. If you leave out the second part, the term secret applies to nearly all knowledge and becomes meaningless.
Erik said
The line between what is secret and what is unkown (or unknown to some people) is an excellent question — my answer (and I believe the answer) is above in my response to Mark. A secret requires that people affirmatively attempt to prevent that knowledge from being disclosed. I’m not sure I understand the distinction in your last two sentences. If a terrorist organization made no effort to hide its existence (and many don’t, because it’s hard to inspire terror if no one’s heard of you), I would not consider its existence to be a secret.
September 3, 2010, 9:34 amDotar Sojat says:
I’m originally from Wichita, the Koch’s home town. The family business was built from the ground up over two generations through hard work and perserverance. The Kochs have donated hundreds of millions to non political charities and philanthropic causes for no reason other than to do good for the benefit of others. Thousands of people work for their businesses in good jobs. We like and appreciate them. I think that their record compares rather favorably with that of Mr. Soros.
September 3, 2010, 9:44 amalkali says:
The term “covert” appears in the article’s title, “Covert Operations,” which is a reference to the military/intelligence use of the term, but nowhere in the article.
The word “secret” is used only once in the article to refer to the Kochs (“A shell corporation, Triad Management, had paid more than three million dollars for attack ads in twenty-six House races and three Senate races. … The brothers were suspected of having secretly paid for the attack ads, most of which aired in states where Koch Industries did business. … The Kochs, when asked by reporters if they had given the money, refused to comment.”).
September 3, 2010, 9:48 amAdam Berkowicz says:
September 3, 2010, 9:59 amStephen Lathrop says:
Exactly. The point you miss is what that means in a political context, where the same disclosure must occur millions of times to be politically useful. Using a cat’s-paw cutout like a policy think tank to hide private advocacy assures that in the vast majority of those cases disclosure of the private interest won’t occur. Political professionals rely all the time on the notion that information can simultaneously be well know to cognoscenti, but hidden from the electorate.
September 3, 2010, 10:05 amCalderon says:
Alkali said:
By appearing in the title, “covert” sets the tone for the article. I agree with Ilya’s characterization that “she tries to insinuate that the Kochs’ efforts to fund various libertarian organizations are somehow secret or deceptive.” And many readers of the article, such as rpt above, clearly agree that article indicates that the funding was secret or deceptive.
So that doesn’t really change any of my arguments. It just means Mark Field looked up the wrong word. (I’m kidding in that last sentence, of course)
September 3, 2010, 10:06 amMark Field says:
I don’t pretend to keep track of every vice-presidential candidate on third party tickets. I suspect I’m in good company on that score — I doubt many here could give much information about LaDonna Harris without a search.
In any case, this isn’t relevant to Mayer’s point, which is about his money contributions rather than his run for office.
Of course. That’s the conclusion I’d expect a libertarian to draw, just as I’d expect others to draw exactly the opposite ones. That doesn’t mean anyone is “wrong” in a factual sense, it just means that they differ in their judgment about the effect of policies. And all your post really says is that you differ from Mayer in your judgment about the effects of libertarianism.
AFAIK, nobody has suggested that they are hidden.
Presumably because they make lots of donations to other causes as well, and they may like being known for those.
I don’t believe anyone thinks that the posters here receive secret orders from their overlords.
That tracks my view pretty closely, and that of most other liberals I know also.
But I’m not supplying any definition. I’m just using the M-W definition I found on line. Maybe Mayer should have used the words “little known” or something similar, but I don’t think she actually misused the word “secret” given the definitions.
September 3, 2010, 10:06 amrpt says:
Almost all of that may be true (except that the financial contribution and lobbying activities are not “hard work and perseverance”), but it does nothing to rebut any of the claims in the Mayer article. Furthermore, if your donations are the benefit of others, you do not need to have your name on the buildings, programs, etc. That is a sign that there are other motivations; not necessarily bad, but certainly not without self interest.
September 3, 2010, 10:16 amCalderon says:
Respectfully, I’m not missing anything. I doubt any disclosure in the history of humankind has “occur[ed] millions of times.” While using terms like “cat’s-paw cutout” is cute, it applies to virtually every 501(c)(4) organization, politican, and donor in existence. If you want to sound like a conspiracy freak and claim that all these organizations from Cato to the Open Society Institute and Center for American Progess and all politicians are secretly funded, while all donors provide secret funds, that’s up to you. Just don’t expect anyone else to agree with how you’re using those terms.
September 3, 2010, 10:16 amMark Field says:
Great — after posting my 10:06 comment, I learn that Mayer never used the word “secret” anyway. C’est la vie, I guess.
September 3, 2010, 10:21 amShag from Brookline says:
With respect to David M.’s response:
“Such a claim would require, you know, evidence, not mere ‘pointing it out.’ Given the ratio of innocent to guilty people arrested, it seems highly implausible.”
to my comment, I did not refer to people arrested. People are accused of crimes quite a bit, by every and anybody, including on blogs, without being arrested. But the efforts of the ACLU over the years have kept many so accused from being arrested. And with respect to the ratio referenced, it should be kept in mind that plea deals are often made even by the innocent for any number of reasons, usually lack of funds to engage legal firepower that such as the KOCH Bros. can afford.
September 3, 2010, 10:25 amtea party cup and saucer says:
The Koch brothers really must be hitting a political impact nerve, for the leftist corpsmen to be pulling out their knives en masse like this before the election, slashing away with their usual cutwords, such as “secret”, “corporate”, “self-interests”, “oil”, “conservative”, “wealth”, etc.
Problem is, more and more people are smarting up as to how the same terms apply, and sometimes more aptly, to our fine demagogic Democrats; at least, that what used to draw blood are now overused, pitted dull blades.
From what I’ve read, there isn’t anything particularly secret, especially sinister or unusually selfish in the case of the Kochs’ political speech and philanthropic giving. On the contrary, they’re serving good cause. My hope is that they and the Libertarians here not be intimidated by (self-serving, ungrounded and hypocritical) PC attacks.
September 3, 2010, 10:26 amkiwi dave says:
Oooh, I like this game. If the Kochs donate anonymously, they’re secretive and covert; if they put their names on things, I guess they’re narcissistic megalomaniacs.
September 3, 2010, 10:31 amA. Criminal says:
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
That partial sentence IDs the article as a hatchet job.
September 3, 2010, 10:49 amKevin! says:
Really? I don’t think any liberals are surprised or even particularly care that billionaires are spending billions on policies benefiting billionaires. The frothing has been from the recipients of Koch funds about how unfair the article is, taking a shot at the poor innocent Kochs.
I think every liberal blog I’ve seen on this has just been amused about how outraged and whiny the libertarians have been about a NEWSPAPER ARTICLE, as if a little criticism is some auto de fe.
September 3, 2010, 10:52 amJoe says:
As Dilan implies, these posts are informative, but maybe not for the reasons intended.
September 3, 2010, 10:56 amMartinned says:
Well, my impression from other sources is that particularly Charles Koch has a dislike of the President that reaches Tea Party levels of hysterics. (Hence is donations to Tea Party related organisations.) In such a political climate, I wouldn’t say it is unreasonable to say that Koch and the Tea Parties are waging a war against Obama, just like that metaphor is entirely appropriate to describe the manner in which the more extreme groups on the liberal side waged their opposition against President Bush.
War is a situation were surrender and/or compromise are no longer an option, where winning is all that matters. That sounds about right for the current US political climate.
September 3, 2010, 10:56 amKevin! says:
Doesn’t point 2 boil down to “We don’t support the Kochs’ interests 100% of the time. We only support them 80-90% of the time!”
Haha, I hadn’t seen the attempted redefinition in the update. Yes, someone is only pro-corporate if they are 100% in favor of all corporations 100% of the time. That’s what the word means.
September 3, 2010, 10:56 amB.D. says:
So are the Koch brothers under an obligation to run full page ads in major newspapers detailing for the lazy all their political activities and their contributions to libertarian-conservative think tanks?
This discussion of secrecy and concealment and such is truly bizarre. The Kochs are not hiding anything.
September 3, 2010, 11:02 amMartinned says:
It certainly puts comments such as these from Wednesday Kopel/Coulter thread into perspective:
September 3, 2010, 11:04 amLiam says:
Is the annual GDP of San Marino concealed, or do I just not give a damn?
Either way, since I don’t know it, they’re probably up to something sinister. Best to Nuke ‘em just to be safe.
September 3, 2010, 11:08 amrangel, blago et al. says:
The frothing has been from the recipients of Koch funds (kevin!)
my impression from other sources is that particularly Charles Koch has a dislike of the President that reaches Tea Party levels of hysterics. (Martinned)
Projection at its finest. Let’s see, the Libertarians are rabid frothers out to enslave the populace, Tea Partiers are overwrought racist drama queens, and of course Republicans are an alliance of the calculating evil rich and stoopid poor Christianist homophobic haters.
And then there are the imminently rational, reasoned, truthful, ethical, fair-minded and calm (except when exercised for the right, I mean worthy, cause) Democrats?
Here’s a bumper sticker for the party of social justice this upcoming election: (Class) War Is
September 3, 2010, 11:32 amNotthe Answer (picture of a red herring)Joe T. Guest says:
Hah. So “discretion” or “closemouthed” means secret. Funny. Guess that means I’m having secret sexual liasions with a woman (my wife), I secretly send regular payments to a government agency in exchange for services (taxes), and I secretly act as an agent and fiduciary for powerful business and government interests (by preserving attorney-client confidentiality).
Okay, I get it. In the absence of Bush and Rove, and the clever rebranding of the Death Artists Formerly Known As Blackwater into a symbol that is too hard to pronounce, you guys need a right wing bogeyman to fill in the holes in your conspiracy theories, so the square peg libertarian Koch brothers are going to get pounded into that round hole. But c’mon, you gotta come with some stronger stuff than that and the allegation that there’s something sinister about underwriting public policy organizations through a non-profit funding structure that is subject to mandatory disclosure to anybody who asks about it. I do feel compelled, however, to give you a middling B+ for hitting up Websters and doing the “original meaning” thing. That gets bigtime Originalist argument points from me even if I think the argument itself doesn’t have much traction.
September 3, 2010, 11:32 amThe Awful Truth says:
Wouldn’t dropping an SUV on them do the trick?
Does anyone know why Mussolini never annexed San Marino? I can never understand Benito’s occasional bouts of scruples.
September 3, 2010, 11:37 amShelbyC says:
“Corporate Interests”??
What is that? Only people have interests.
September 3, 2010, 11:38 amMartinned says:
First of all, I’d like to note that you snipped the part of my comment that explained that this is a plague on both your houses. Also, I’d like to emphasise that I made no statement about libertarians generally, who seem to be a rather ivory tower crowd, not very prone to hysterics.
September 3, 2010, 11:44 amravenshrike says:
All human action is motivated by self interest. Even if that interest is merely to give yourself warm fuzzies for ‘being a good person’. It’s still self interest and to claim otherwise is utterly absurd.
September 3, 2010, 11:44 amMartinned says:
Yes, that particular line of criticism of Citizens United was stupid.
September 3, 2010, 11:45 amMartinned says:
The problem with such a model of human behaviour is that in explaining everything it explains nothing.
BTW, just for fun, ponder this: Statements of the form “All X are Y” can be falsified. Statements of the form “Some X are Y” can be proved. A statement of the form “All X has some Y” can be neither proved nor falsified. An example of such a statement is “All people maximise something, which we will call utility.” That doesn’t mean that utility maximisation is tautological or unscientific, it just means that it is an assumption with limited mileage.
September 3, 2010, 11:47 amAL says:
Mayer thinks the Kochs political activities are properly classified “covert” because (i) the Kochs are not, themselves, politically vocal, but (ii) they nonetheless exercise tight control over the political message of the organizations they fund. (ii) means that the institutes they fund are sock-puppets; (i) ensures that few know this is the case. Using middlemen to pump your personal political views into the body politic, while keeping your own involvement obscure, seems like covert political activity to me. (And, sure, David Koch ran as libertarian VP (in order to bankroll Clark’s campaign), and the Kochs aren’t totally invisible, but (oh, Ilya!) that has no bearing on whether those who absorb Koch-funded views know where they’re coming from (cf. rational ignorance).) Finally, you’re certainly right that Mayer implies there’s something disingenuous about the Koch’s covert politicking. But isn’t there something disingenuous about disguising your own personal brand of libertarianism in legitimating institutional garb?
September 3, 2010, 11:53 amMark Field says:
I like this plan, though mostly if I’m the one with the (secret) nuclear launch code.
So much for the corporate opportunity doctrine, derivative actions, and the concept of fiduciary duty.
September 3, 2010, 11:57 amShelbyC says:
Sure. Why would anybody give a crap about any of that stuff if it weren’t people’s interest in corporations?
September 3, 2010, 12:01 pmPatty Shundynide says:
Still, Calderon defeated you (and your absurd literalism) handily.
September 3, 2010, 12:11 pmyankee says:
That’s only because you’re tautologically defining “self-interest” as any goal or objective I may happen to have.
September 3, 2010, 12:12 pmravenshrike says:
And if I was trying to explain anything, you might have a point. However, RPT was bitching about how the Koch’s were acting in their own self interest. True, however every time Soros donates money, he too is donating for his own self interest. Whether that self interest is because it gives him warm fuzzies, or because he’s playing the long game in currency markets and wants to see a policy shift to assist that game, or even because he thinks government should be run a certain way which in no way impacts his investments, ALL are forms of self interest. To pretend otherwise is stupid.
In making the argument that he is, RPT is attempting to equate self interest with evil. It is not. RPT can argue all he wants that libertarian motives are evil, or that laizze-faire capitalism is evil, or that merely attempting to make money is evil, and those are arguments which can be debated on the merits. In his pretense that altruistic actions are good and are not motivated by self interest he is removing that capacity for debate on the merits of a particular action, because if altruism is not connected to self interest, and altruism is good, then selfish actions are inherently bad.
September 3, 2010, 12:27 pmThe Awful Truth says:
On the self interest question, I think there is a contradiction between two liberal positions.
1) Liberalism produces better economic results. Even if taxes are higher and regulations tighter, businesses will earn more profits and rich people ultimately make more money, if liberal policies are adopted. Warren Buffet is often trotted in support of this. The Clinton years gave this argument some credibility.
2) Businesses and rich people who donate to liberal groups are public spirited and acting against their own self interests.
If 1 is true then 2 can’t be right?
September 3, 2010, 12:41 pmalkali says:
1. Summarize article in reductive way, using loaded terminology.
2. On the basis of said summary, criticize article for being reductive and for using loaded terminology.
3. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
For what it’s worth, my own meta-commentary is subject to the same criticism. But is there really anything here?
Mayer reported that while the Kochs are well known in New York for their cultural philanthropy, it is less well known that they also donate significant amounts to libertarian and conservative political organizations who frequently advocate for positions that are congenial to the Kochs’ petroleum and petrochemical businesses. That’s true, isn’t it?
For people who are familiar with the Kochs, I can understand the criticism, “What is new here?”, though it was new to me.
September 3, 2010, 12:48 pmMark Field says:
Your comment is either tautological or irrelevant. The legal system expressly recognizes that corporations qua corporations have interests. Of course we “care” about things because people are involved, but the law still adopts legal doctrines which treat the corporate entity as a “person” having distinct interests.
September 3, 2010, 12:55 pmLiam says:
Have you ever noticed how nicely Soros’ philanthropic efforts in Africa dovetail with Soros Fund Management’s interests in stable governments with coherent monetary policies they can exploit?
I don’t see that as being actually relevant to anything, but apparently dovetails are uncommon and totally evidence of malice.
September 3, 2010, 12:56 pmHm. says:
There may very well be other articles, but the fixation from these three defenders is on a single article. It’s just a bit much. There was a steady 1 post per day being written about Mayer’s article, all from people who had benefited enough from the Kochs to feel the need to mention possible/probable conflicts of interest.
If Mayer’s piece was a ‘hack job’ as somebody else posted in these comments, the barrage of Koch pieces on this blog certainly qualify as hack jobs, as well. I might not think that if all of this information (indeed, much of it seems to be repeated) was in a single post, which wouldn’t look so much like a bunch of Kochites running as fast as they can to defend their hero, or something along those lines.
September 3, 2010, 1:01 pmMDT says:
ravenshrike,
RPT can argue all he wants that libertarian motives are evil, or that laizze-faire capitalism is evil,
That spelling was bad enough when Kamal did it. Not you too!
September 3, 2010, 1:04 pmyankee says:
No, I don’t think it’s typical for those of us on the left to believe that left-wing economic policies will make the rich richer than right-wing economic policies. Left-wing economic policies will be better for the vast majority of people, but not for the rich as a class.
As for your second point, I think it’s much more complicated than that. Liberal policies will almost invariably benefit specific businesses or specific rich people even if they are bad for business and/or the rich as a class. Liberal groups also often have interests orthogonal to the donors’ economic interests, especially if they’re focused on social issues.
Some rich people donate to groups that directly conflict with the donors’ economic interests; I’d call those people public-spirited. I don’t think businesses ever donate for “public-spirited” reasons: business giving is a form of P.R. (I doubt many businesses give to groups opposed to their economic interests either.)
September 3, 2010, 1:09 pmKazinski says:
So? There is a lot of that going around. That’s part of what makes politics interesting.
September 3, 2010, 1:30 pmKazinski says:
What is it about the left and corporations? A corporation is nothing more than a voluntary association of individuals to achieve goals that they would not be able to achieve individually. They supply 90% of our material wants and needs allowing us to have ample amounts of free time and disposable income to spare. Or alternatively to work less and still be able to afford food and shelter.
When it is late night and I am hungry and away from home, who is there to feed me? A corporation has taken it upon it self to keep a restaurant open all night just for such an occasion, and they pay a wage high enough to motivate their employees to voluntarily stay up all night waiting for my chance visit. And then if I get tired, I am sure to find another corporation that is willing to provide me a clean bed, and a place to take a shower nearby.
They care about me and my wants and needs, I can even go to a near by store and choose from 40 different kinds of toilet paper, so I don’t have to even compromise on the smallest (though at times very important) details of my life.
I just don’t get the antipathy against corporations.
September 3, 2010, 1:46 pmRPT says:
Of course; who suggested otherwise? Soros and the Kochs act in their own self-interest. We may disagree as to whether those interest are good for anyone else. Soros is probably as “secretive” as the Kochs; who cares? Of course I advise private clients not to disclose information which is not compelled unless it benefits them to do so.
What these threads are about is the posters’ attempts to sanitize the Kochs’ and their motives, as if they were not motivated by self-interest, or are somehow heroic “defenders of freedom”, so some such other nonsense. They are polluters who don’t like pollution regulation. They hire people in Kansas City because they need employees to run their businesses. They pay what they have to pay, and no more. This is fact not virtue. Wall Street doesn’t like regulation either.
I still haven’t seen anything comparable re Soros or anyone else deemed “liberal”, or anything like the description of GMU as a captive institution.
September 3, 2010, 1:58 pmBruce Hayden says:
The problem there is that liberal economic policies really don’t make the middle class richer. Maybe the poorest over a short period of time. But what they do do is make those closely connected to the government richer. i.e. their policies strongly promote rent seeking.
We have repeatedly seen this with this Congress and President. The type of crony capitalism they practice has benefited their supporters at a cost to the rest of us. Thus, you have the federal government borrowing trillions of dollars in order to give state and local government workers raises, and to protect the pensions of GM and Chrysler auto workers. The biggest financial institutions managed to effectively mostly exempt themselves from the recently enacted reforms to their industry, leaving the smaller companies, who will be subject to the new rules, at an even greater competitive disadvantage.
The problem here, I suspect, is that liberal economic policies look good on paper. But when implemented, they invariably lead to greatly increased crony capitalism. After all, the biggest companies and unions have the most at stake, and so can spend the most promoting their views. And, as a result, they invariably have the best access to those making the laws.
So, in the end, with liberals in charge of the government, the rich get richer, the middle class gets poorer, and those at the bottom may be helped a little in the short run, at the cost of condemning them to lifelong poverty.
September 3, 2010, 2:01 pmChris Green says:
I think you are right that corporate interests, at least the interests of large, politically influential corporations do not always line up with a laissez faire policy and I give you credit as an left of center thinker (I’m assuming) for saying it.
Your statement that there is a social interest in less wealth disparity is also interesting. Median income (median income, unlike average income represents your average person) has risen about 10% per decade from 1970 through 2000 in the US. Gains in median income since 2000 were abolished by the current economic downturn. Nevertheless, the top 5% have certainly become wealthy at a rate much greater then 10% per year. In other words while the pieces of the pie have gotten somewhat bigger for your average US citizen, the pieces have gotten much bigger for the wealthy. Is this a problem? I’m not sure. You suggest it is. Is envy a factor? Poor people here would be considered rich in Africa, and even well off compared to poor in Hong Kong. People’s perception of their own wealth, social status and opportunity is always in comparison to their better-off neighbors and/or countrymen, not to the global average, or even, I would suggest, to their own needs. However, I do think there is a significant social interest in having at least one parent NOT working full time and this does have implications for what people need to be able to earn.
September 3, 2010, 2:18 pmByomtov says:
Kazinski,
What is it about the left and corporations? A corporation is nothing more than a voluntary association of individuals to achieve goals that they would not be able to achieve individually.
Not so. A corporation is an organization, true, but it is an organization that enjoys important legal privileges that “voluntary associations” do not automatically enjoy. It is these privileges – primarily limited liability of owners and unlimited life – that enable corporations to amass large amounts of capital and provide you with your midnight hamburger. Large amounts of capital confer power that can sometimes be abused.
Nor are the shareholders a “voluntary association” in the same way a chess club is. They are investors who may or may not have an intrinsic interest in the company’s products. Indeed, they may or may not even know they own shares in the corporation. Thus they exercise virtually no control over the activities of management, which therefore is in position to use the corporation’s resources as they see fit.
So there are two reasons for concern. First, the concentration of power in the company itself, and second, the fact that this power is wielded by a relatively small group of corporate managers. All this happens not because “it’s a voluntary asociation.” It happens because of the legal privileges I described.
Now, you are correct that there are many great benefits that flow from this. But don’t kid yourself. There are dangers too.
September 3, 2010, 2:33 pmByomtov says:
Kazinski,
What is it about the left and corporations? A corporation is nothing more than a voluntary association of individuals to achieve goals that they would not be able to achieve individually.
Not so. A corporation is an organization, true, but it is an organization that enjoys important legal privileges that “voluntary associations” do not automatically enjoy. It is these privileges – primarily limited liability of owners and unlimited life – that enable corporations to amass large amounts of capital and provide you with your midnight hamburger. Large amounts of capital confer power that can sometimes be abused.
Nor are the shareholders a “voluntary association” in the same way a chess club is. They are investors who may or may not have an intrinsic interest in the company’s products. Indeed, they may or may not even know they own shares in the corporation. Thus they exercise virtually no control over the activities of management, which therefore is in position to use the corporation’s resources as they see fit.
So there are two reasons for concern. First, the concentration of power in the company itself, and second, the fact that this power is wielded by a relatively small group of corporate managers. All this happens not because “it’s a voluntary asociation.” It happens because of the legal privileges I described.
Now, you are correct that there are many great benefits that flow from this. But don’t kid yourself. There are dangers too.
September 3, 2010, 2:33 pmByomtov says:
Sorry for the duplicate. Something odd happened with the preview button.
September 3, 2010, 2:34 pmravenshrike says:
Eh, I didn’t remember the actual spelling and just copy/pasted someone else’s since FireFox doesn’t have it in spellcheck. Apparently I copied the wrong person.
September 3, 2010, 3:05 pmChris Green says:
I’m not sure either. I’ve have always been treated decently by the companies I worked for. On the other hand, I understood the rules of the game pretty well. Not everyone does.
I have noticed that the defining attribute of a progressivism is intense dislike (often hate) of corporate America. Progressives might differ as to weather socialism or a capitalist welfare state is better, but, and I apologize if I over generalize, they all seem to hate corporations.
To me, it is like hating snakes because they bite or mountain lions because they kill cute little deer. Corporations behave in very predictable ways and do what they are designed to do. It doesn’t produce ideal results, but it produces far better results than any other system countries have experimented with. The millions that live at the margins of society in recently industrialized third world countries wouldn’t be living idyllic lives of pastoral purity if not for evil capitalism. Many of them, if not a majority would be dead. People forget what it was like to have a famine cycle occur every 30 or 40 years in well populated, pre-industrial societies (not to mention the plagues and high infant mortality).
September 3, 2010, 3:17 pmKazinski says:
And the Left’s prescription for dealing with these “dangers”? Mandatory taxation fueling a huge government bureaucracy to regulate the corporations.
I think I see a few dangers there too.
September 3, 2010, 3:20 pmlosantiville says:
“If libertarianism doesn’t benefit billionaires more then sucking at the government teat, then who could it possibly appeal to?”
Anyone who doesn’t like to be constantly threatened by fines, imprisonment, or death if we fail to obey commies.
Business can be conducted w/o coercion using anonymous voting protocols and third party guarantors instead of registered corporations and contract litigation in government courts.
Abolishing the NJ public schools (as just one of many examples) would save NJ citizens at least 75% of the $20K/year they spent ‘educating’ NJ children. Greater efficiency = more wealth.
If the feds didn’t design cars, they would cost at least half of what they currently do. That’s quite a savings. Deregulation of housing production would drop costs/unit by 50% or more.
We pay vast sums of money for the inefficiencies of the regulatory model. The poor and the rich would both end up with more.
September 3, 2010, 3:21 pmKazinski says:
Or the gray tenements and inefficient massively polluting heavy industries of communist societies.
September 3, 2010, 3:26 pmfalse seriousness says:
More evidence this blog is a joke, with the exception of Kerr. Fawning (and probably conflicted) 4th rate professors with their bitter little agendas is not a pretty sight. How noble to rise to the defense of those poor misunderstood and victimized right wing billionaires!
If I defend the Kochs’ right to treat people however *they* wish to treat people, and *not* based on any externally regulated standard (like pesky laws or regulations), will I get a stipend? That is the actual essence of “libertarianism” these days.
It’s a fraud of an “intellectual” movement.
September 3, 2010, 3:27 pmStitch Jones says:
As Dilan implies, these posts are informative, but maybe not for the reasons intended.
This is a really good point. You see, you can tell that Obama really is a Muslim because otherwise progs wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the claim. I mean it’s not like they object to the claim because it’s absurd and they want to emphasize how stupid it is. That could never happen.
Progs are just trying to keep the truth hidden- but smart people like Joe and Dilan aren’t fooled are they? In fact, they see right through the objections to the essential truth. Nice work boys.
September 3, 2010, 3:29 pmKamal says:
Maybe I misstated. My point isn’t about corporations. Those are constructs. The people who run the companies don’t loose their wealth. The only people affected are the workers. GM, AIG, and other Banks would have failed, but the people who drove them into the ground for short term profits would have come out just fine.
September 3, 2010, 3:35 pmByomtov says:
Kazinski,
Mandatory taxation…
Well, taxation does tend to be mandatory.
More important, an awareness of corporate power does not imply obliviousness to the dangers of government power, as you seem to believe.
September 3, 2010, 3:48 pmMark Field says:
I think you are overstating it. What (many) liberals and progressives think is this: corporations exist because of government subsidy, i.e., laws which enable them and which protect them from liabilities. The corporations infringe on the freedom of others. Because government policy created the problem, government policy is necessary to alleviate it.
September 3, 2010, 4:04 pmKirk Parker says:
I read once that the squad he sent to do it had faulty brakes on their car, and by the time they got stopped they were already past it.
September 3, 2010, 4:14 pmByomtov says:
You see, you can tell that Obama really is a Muslim because otherwise progs wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the claim. I mean it’s not like they object to the claim because it’s absurd and they want to emphasize how stupid it is.
I don’t worry about the claim. I worry about the fact that the Republican Party is so far gone that one third of Republicans believe such an absurd, stupid thing.
September 3, 2010, 4:38 pmRPT says:
Wow. Talk about cradle to grave security. After reading this comment, I hope I never hear another complaint about the dreaded liberal “nanny state” again. To paraphrase the Firesign Theatre some decades ago: “the corporate form is so powerful that it can only be used for good or evil.”
September 3, 2010, 5:34 pmverbena says:
I love the little aside stating that you could have made much more money if you were a left-wing academic.
I’m reminded of Ted Frank’s comment a while ago that he is not compromised by funds he’s received various organizations because he could probably made more money playing poker.
September 3, 2010, 5:50 pmRPT says:
Well, I didn’t use the term evil, either directly or by implication, in any of my comments. Making money is covered by the Firesign Theatre rule. Theologically, however, selfishness is fundamentally contrary to the teaching, and life, of Jesus.
September 3, 2010, 5:52 pmloader says:
You make some good points. Thanks for the comment.
September 3, 2010, 6:21 pmStitch Jones says:
I worry about the fact that the Republican Party is so far gone that one third of Republicans believe such an absurd, stupid thing.
I’m sure you do. Which is why you were so concerned when an equal portion of the Democratic party believed that Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. I remember how frequently you would comment on how “far gone” that party was to have so many memebrs believe such. Oh wait, that wasn’t you- that guy had intellectual integrity. I can’t believe I got you guys confused.
My bad.
September 3, 2010, 6:26 pmByomtov says:
Which is why you were so concerned when an equal portion of the Democratic party believed that Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Actually, they didn’t, but never mind.
September 3, 2010, 6:45 pmRPT says:
Another good deed by the carpetbagging Koch Bros; this time for us in California!
“A company controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have bankrolled numerous right-wing causes, has donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative that would suspend the state’s global-warming law.
The contribution was made Thursday and came from Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Koch brothers were the subject of a recent profile in The New Yorker.
The Koch donation came a day after Tesoro, a Texas oil company that has been bankrolling the pro-Prop 23 campaign, put $1 million into the campaign coffers.
According to the No campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests and 89 percent of that money has come from out of state. Three companies, Koch Industries, Tesoro, and Valero — another Texas-based oil company — have provided 80 percent of those funds.
“There are three companies from out of state that have a very specific economic interest in rolling back our clean energy economy and jobs,” Thomas Steyer, a San Francisco hedge-fund manger who is co-chair of the No on 23 campaign, said during a conference call Friday.
“I am a businessman,” he added. “I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe in profit. But companies have to accept the rules that are placed on them.”
Steyer, founder of Farallon Capital Management, has pledged $5 million of his own money to the No campaign.
As the traditional Labor Day kickoff to the fall campaign season approaches, the No campaign has also been collecting some large donations, albeit from individuals rather than corporations.
A Southern California businesswoman, Claire Perry, contributed $250,000 on Monday. Last Friday, Julie Packard, a daughter of Hewlett-Packard founder David Packard, gave $101,895.
“If the Yes on 23 folks win, we’re going to change the framework for investment here,” said Steyer. “We’re going to change our ability to create new industries. Those industries are going to go elsewhere, probably not in the United States. Probably specifically our biggest competition in this is China.” “
September 3, 2010, 6:51 pmAnon says:
This article makes no sense.
If someone earns say $10 million or more a year–and the Koch’s earn substantially more than that–then then there is a direct link pecuniary benefit link between lobbying for lower taxes and personal benefit.
How can seriously argue there is not a link? Does anyone honest with half a brain really believe lowering taxes usually raises goverment revenue? Currently, there is almost 30 years of data: Publish the epicritical studies. And address Mr. Stockman’s and Mr. Bartlett’s cogent counter facts.
Similarly, rules limit the ability of the people with power to benefit from it. As to the real agenda of many so called “Libertarians”, Federalist essay #1 warns that “the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty” and warns against:
“the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country or flatter themselves with fairer prospects [if the laws and government are weak].”
Thirdly, pervasive throughout the so called “libertarian” writings is a constant theme that the general public somehow benefits if the oil companies, for one example, can operate without “excessive” regulations. I put the term “excessive” in quotes because those rules are rarely identified specifically and law is by nature a complicated mosiac is takes even the most intelligent years to learn–and no one knows it all. Attacking the law as over complex has been an objection with some support which could be levelled throughout history. I’m not sure what to say except that if you are unable to make the connection like Mr. Hamilton or say, Oliver Wendell Holmes, between selfist sociopaths and attacks on the Rule of Law, you may wish to stop questioning the judgment of those who do so.
Its seems pretty clear at this point that the Koch supported tea party candidates are not vetted. The only reasonable conclusion from what seems fairly clear is that the Koch boys do not care about their candidates integrity, judgment or competence, so long as the Koch brothers pay less in taxes and the rule of law is weakened so the Koch boys may play unrestrained.
September 3, 2010, 7:22 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Why do you hate America?
September 3, 2010, 7:33 pmmattski says:
There’s a better way to prevent big money from turning gov’t into their handmaiden and that’s to elect better politicians. Giving up on honest government is a vote for the law of the jungle. (But, hey, you knew I’d say that.)
As the great George Mitchell once said (paraphrasing):
September 3, 2010, 7:47 pmmattski says:
That’s a weird statement. What makes you think most liberals are taking some other view than the one you describe??? (Well, for that matter, why do so many VC commenters accuse liberals of being “commies”? Good fucking question, if you ask me.)
But you’d “probably oppose” us if we took your advice.
!
September 3, 2010, 7:53 pmmattski says:
My point is valid whether or not the economy is a “zero sum game.” If you take the referee off the field then the team with the biggest, least scrupulous players is going to clean up. If I start with a big advantage, dispensing with rules favors me.
To put it another way, power accrues to itself. That doesn’t mean that small business won’t pop up and do OK, it means that in the aggregate the rich will have a field day at the expense of the poor.
September 3, 2010, 8:05 pmmattski says:
It helps to distinguish between different sorts of self-interest. If it weren’t for that Fountainhead Lady I’d use the word “enlightened.”
How about “wholesome” instead? There are people who are relatively community-minded, there are people who are less so. That isn’t controversial and that explains the whole of it.
September 3, 2010, 8:12 pmJoe says:
Stitch Jones says:
As Dilan implies, these posts are informative, but maybe not for the reasons intended. [me]
This is a really good point. You see, you can tell that Obama really is a Muslim because otherwise progs wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the claim. I mean it’s not like they object to the claim because it’s absurd and they want to emphasize how stupid it is. That could never happen.
Progs are just trying to keep the truth hidden– but smart people like Joe and Dilan aren’t fooled are they? In fact, they see right through the objections to the essential truth. Nice work boys.
I’m not aware of liberal opposite members of VC, let’s say Balkinization, spending this much time on the Obama is really a Muslim claim … surely not on ONE article about it. Also, if you think the two are on the same level, again, it is pretty instructive.
September 3, 2010, 8:24 pmJoe says:
It is these privileges — primarily limited liability of owners and unlimited life — that enable corporations to amass large amounts of capital and provide you with your midnight hamburger.
Back in the day, corporations often were actually limited in scope, incorporated for limited purposes and often for limited periods of time. It is interesting how we are now led to believe that corporations are inherently “unlimited” in life span and so forth. If corporations were more regulated, various aspects like their “personhood” in certain respects would be much less troubling.
September 3, 2010, 8:28 pmjeff connor says:
I have just read the New Yorker article and agree with this post 100% The article reads and uses logic like a better written Huffington Post piece. At one point she quotes a source from Media Matters (as a long time New Yorker reader and still, yet, sometimes. It is a sad sad day when they use Media Matters as a source) and mentions that they are, “Democratic leaning.”
September 3, 2010, 8:39 pmReading the article between the lines, like a 70′s era Soviet citizen, These Koch fellows come off well, to my thinking.
Byomtov says:
RPT,
According to the No campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests
No, no. You don’t understand. It has nothing to do with oil or anything like that. It’s just purely philosophical opposition to the proposition.
Just ask Ilya Somin, or David Bernstein, or Todd Zywicki. They can explain it to you.
September 3, 2010, 8:52 pmgeokstr says:
I like the way one of the leftists’ favorites put it:
September 3, 2010, 8:55 pmSDN says:
mattski, the synonym for “community minded” is all too often “dictator”.
September 3, 2010, 9:07 pmJoel Mackey says:
Well, you could, there is plenty of open land, BUT IT IS OWNED BY THE GOVERNMENT!
Besides that though, you can make a life in society much easier in a laizze-faire environment than in a strictly regulated one. Starting your own business is much easier, and maintaining that business profitably is much easier if you are not beholden to some agency or group of agencies which can keep you from operating on a whim.
Ask the little girl ticketed for her lemonade stand, which business environment is more conducive to business.
September 3, 2010, 9:13 pmrpt says:
Another atheist post. You have been hanging around the wrong community.
September 3, 2010, 9:16 pmlcp says:
The Soros apologists (Mark Fields) are really sickening with their desparate and senseless parsing of Somin’s thoughtful response to a typical left-wing hit piece. 99.999% of people have absolutely ZERO idea who George Soros is or what he stands for. Hell, a vast majority of Americans can’t even identify the Vice President from administration to administration. That’s not to say American’s are uninformed, it’s just that Soros – by design – shouldn’t matter to the vast majority of Americans. So, whether the Koch’s involvement in some thinktank or another is “secret” isn’t the issue, it’s the framing of the whole article. Secret is the merely this disgruntled leftist author’s code word for nefarious, as in: “The Koch’s are up to something that I don’t like. But, I know if I told you what it really was, you’d laugh at me (because what they’re doing as American citizens is perfectly American and perfectly normal), so I’ll tell you it’s ‘secret’, instead. Because that sounds sinister.”
Really, Mark Fields, stop wasting everyone’s time with your juvenile drivel. It is painfully obvious that what you dislike is that someone (anyone) dares exercise their rights to powerfully and effectively voice a convincing opinion contrary to your own. You have no issue with the Anti-American scumbag Soros spending multi-millions of his own (foreign) money trying to illegitimately influence American elections, because, like Soros, you’re a fascist. a petty, small-minded tyrant who despises freedom, because free people routinely challenge your fragile self-conception as superior to them.
September 3, 2010, 9:27 pmBrian McKim says:
Well, it took some digging on my part, but I finally determined the truth: I am certain that I have found the “secret” connection between the Kochs and The Cato Institute.
I found out by searching through the annals of that supersecret publication known as Wikipedia. I accessed via my supersecret method known as the World Wide Web.
Shhhhhh… do not let anyone know about ANY of this.
September 3, 2010, 9:44 pmJohn C. Randolph says:
What utter nonsense. In a free market, companies go out of business routinely. It’s not the free market that kept Chrysler, AIG, or Goldman Sachs in business when they failed.
-jcr
September 3, 2010, 9:53 pmJohn C. Randolph says:
Well, you could, there is plenty of open land, BUT IT IS OWNED BY THE GOVERNMENT!
No it isn’t, actually. Government owns nothing at all; the land belongs to the people, and if we want to do something with it, we could (for example) demand legislation to open it up for homesteading.
-jcr
September 3, 2010, 9:56 pmJoe says:
It might be obvious, but only the last paragraph in my reply to Stitch Jones is my own words; the rest is a quote. Sorry — didn’t use the right formatting.
September 3, 2010, 10:17 pmBeldar says:
An elegant post, Prof. Somin. Congratulations.
September 3, 2010, 11:00 pmErik says:
Apparently a large number of people (myself included) have difficulty characterizing what is “secret.” The problem with secrets is that they are only as good as the people supposed to be keeping them. With Soros, the cat’s out of the bag. Most politicos and laypersons following current events at the most basic level know who Soros is. I cannot say the same about the Kochs. Agains, call this a “secret” call this “ignorance” call it what you will. To me, it seems like an intentional effort to keep Koch’s activities out of the public view. With the sheer magnitude of media distribution we have today, part of me thinks SOMEONE should have written an expose on this at some point. Not necessarily a paranoid conspiracy theory but at least an informative profile of sorts, to let me know who the Kochs are. But that hasn’t happened until now. And I like to think of myself as someone who stays informed.
Does this make the Kochs a secret? Well I don’t know. That is a loaded term that can mean many things to many people. I just think that more should have been said about the Kochs up to this point, because honestly I don’t see much of a difference between the Kochs and Soros when it comes right down to it. I want to know who these wealthy patrons of liberal and conservative causes are, regardless of what they support. And just because I could have searched the internet and dug up who the Kochs were a year ago doesn’t mean that I should have had to do so to discover who they are.
September 3, 2010, 11:24 pmShelbyC says:
Er, the recognition of corporations qua corporations having interests is a legal ficton designed to facilitate the legal process.
September 3, 2010, 11:54 pmSmack says:
Wow! What a wasted effort on everyone’s behalf. I am reminded of Shakespeare wherein this is nothing more than a non-issue “That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
So some rich guys use their own money to fund certain issues that they happen to agree with…big effing deal. The only reason it is a problem is because fraulein Mayer is upset that this funding is used on contravention of the big hOpe instead of in the exalted One’s support. Well, welcome to the world of politics and money…you know, the same type of money and political belief that got zerO elected in the first place.
September 4, 2010, 12:26 amThomass says:
And of course; the big elephant in the room. The public doesn’t like the Obama / democrat’s agenda….
Really dems.. seriously, there is a right to privacy for abortion but you can take over my health care decisions? Pfffttt… no one agrees with you… you need to loose big to put things right.
September 4, 2010, 12:55 amHm. says:
Depends on what you mean by ‘no one agrees with you’. Liberals tend to dislike the individual mandate as much as libertarians, though for different reasons. Liberals would be fine with a mandate, if there was that infamous public option.
I’ve yet to see a comprehensive poll that attempts to separate the reasons why people like or dislike the HCR bill. I would bet the unfavorable rating is heavily inflated by the individual mandate, but, as I said, for completely different reasons among the different ideological groups.
September 4, 2010, 1:44 amnick056 says:
These are not even close to errors, and Ilya is being dishonest in saying so. To take the first point, Mayer describes Koch as funding “stealth attacks” on Obama and the federal government. On the very same page of the article’s electronic version, she describes the Texas Defending the American Dream summit, hosted by an organization Koch helped start only six years ago. According to Mayer, “his name was not in evidence at the event” and the event itself made no mention of its corportate sponsorship.
Unless it’s standard practice for prominent billionaires to dim the spotlight on their contributions to their own political events, there is deliberate stealthiness to his approach. He sits on the board of trustees for the Met, so he’s no rich recluse — but his name is nowhere associated with a political summit his own organization is funding.
Mayer explores how Koch formally disavows any direct links to the Tea Party and expresses that no funding has been given to support the Tea Parties. However, at the Texas event, a speaker who draws a salary from the Koch organization funding the event said the following: “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” She later discussed how she was partly responsible as an employee of the Koch-owned company for giving Tea Party activitists “next step training.”
So Koch claim snot to support the Tea Party movements specifically, yet their salaried employees are delivering “next step training” to TP activitists. This alone is not covert — it’s not evidence of mendacity in Koch’s unaffilitated posture? Why not? Because at the same time his own employees are providing training to a group he has no direct links to, he’s made open contributions to other organizations? That doesn’t speak to the issue at all. Ilya is fielding arguments which are transparently dishonest and ruin his credibility as a serious person.
September 4, 2010, 3:06 amyankee says:
The Affordable Care Act is not about health care directly, it’s just about health insurance. We call the ACA a “health care” statute because the key to getting people health care is making sure they can afford it.
September 4, 2010, 4:49 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Like many libertarians, I’m rather skeptical about the notion of a “private monopolist,” if by that phrase you mean a truly private one — one whose monopoly was neither granted nor maintained by the government.
September 4, 2010, 6:30 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
It’s not a “better way” because it’s unrealistic — by nature, a politician is a person who seeks power over others, and therefore is not to be trusted — and simply ignores the problem of what happens if (when) we don’t.
To say “Elect better politicians” is the equivalent of saying that the problem of police officers who conduct abusive or baseless searches of people’s homes is to hire better police officers, rather than to constrain or eliminate the authority of police officers to decide when to conduct searches. (By, e.g., requiring a neutral magistrate to sign off on a warrant.)
As should surprise nobody, Mitchell was wrong. When workers negotiate for an extra nickel, nobody calls that class warfare. When people try to use the government to take money from other people (“the rich,”) solely because of jealousy, that’s class warfare. (Why should “inequality” matter to anybody? It’s none of your business how much money someone else has. It’s one thing to complain that you’re suffering because you don’t have enough; it’s another to complain that someone has more than you.)
September 4, 2010, 6:48 amNOrman H says:
How about making the case that Soros himself is sinister, in that he is a billionaire foreign national attempting to influence American politics for his own end.,
September 4, 2010, 7:09 amSoros is, in effect, short selling the Global Economy, through the American body politic. He is a money man, who is betting on our financial ruin, and assisting the Progressives with destroying the US (and world) economy.
ImADad says:
Having heard Mayer on NPR, and read her article, my conclusion is that she’s accusing the Koch brothers of (a) espousing libertarian and conservative views, (b) having a lot of money, (c) making political donations that coincide with their viewpoints, and (d) not widely advertising any of these facts. The rest of what I’ve observed from Mayer on this is FUD designed to provoke attention and manufacture controversy. If the worst of what Mayer is saying about the Koches is true, my response is essentially, “so what?”
September 4, 2010, 7:59 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Who said it had corporate sponsorship? Mayer doesn’t understand, or tries to trick other people into not understanding, the difference between someone giving money to an organization which does something and someone doing something, and the difference between someone who works for a corporation doing something and the corporation doing something. There’s no evidence Koch had anything to do with the summit, so why would his name be there? It’s not “his own political event,” as you mistakenly describe it.
Yes, Koch founded Americans for Prosperity. So? That doesn’t mean he owns it, let alone controls what a state chapter does.
Well, no. There is no “Koch-owned company.” She’s an employee of Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a not-for-profit.
Well, why it’s not “mendacity” is that (a) you don’t understand the difference between a for-profit and not-for-profit organization; these people are not “their salaried employees,” and (b) it’s not “covert” because it’s right on their website.
September 4, 2010, 8:14 ammattski says:
In your thinking that may be the case. In my thinking community minded implies a few things such as a) you like people as a general rule, b) you’re willing to listen to people and consider their opinions even when they disagree with you, c) you’re willing to compromise and d) you take pleasure in the happiness of others.
September 4, 2010, 8:27 ammattski says:
If I may, two points: 1) “Solely because of jealousy”?? No, not solely because of jealousy, in fact, not-at-all because of jealousy. Rather, because of a desire for a more stable, more generally prosperous social order.
2) “Why should inequality matter to anybody? It’s none of your business…” No, actually it is my business to the extent that I’m a member of society and have a voice as to how society should be governed. Money, for that matter, is a government construct. “The Market” isn’t free, it is dependent upon the government for rules, protections and enforcement. We all have a stake in each other, no matter how repellant you may find homo sapiens to be.
I’m not a frakking commie, and I don’t want to deny anyone the opportunity to make themselves a fortune. It’s just that the ability to make a fortune is a privilege, and you need to pay for it.
September 4, 2010, 8:42 ammattski says:
on my browser preview isn’t working….sorry about the block quote errors
September 4, 2010, 8:43 amStephen Lathrop says:
For one thing, I don’t need to take someone else’s money to reduce inequality. If I simply get more money that reduces inequality, even if you keep all you have. For another, if too many people have more money than me, they are going to bid up the cost of things I might need to buy, or prefer to buy. Those effects are likely to be concentrated in necessities and major amenities—things like safe neighborhoods, good schools, and healthcare. Come to think of it, maybe that’s a reason for you to prefer inequality.
But maybe there is something broader at work too. What if the strength of the commercial economy (as opposed to investments) depends on a robust number of economic transactions? That’s plausible, isn’t it? Each transaction is intended to produce a profit, so more transactions equals more profits, and more capital creation. If you reduced economic transactions systematically, wouldn’t you eventually get to a point where the economy first weakened, and then collapsed for want of activity?
There has to be some upper limit on the number of commercial transactions the upper 1% of the population can undertake, and it has to be notably smaller than the number of transactions everyone else would do with the same money. Add in the fact that the rich are far more likely than others to do some of their transactions outside the national economy of the United States—and to make investments abroad—and it could be that putting too large a share of wealth into the hands of a few just starves the U.S. commercial economy of the activity it needs to stay healthy.
Those seem like pretty good reasons to care about inequality.
September 4, 2010, 8:52 amStephen Lathrop says:
Preview not working on my browser either. Maybe this is a system error.
September 4, 2010, 8:55 ammken says:
Regarding point #1 – Covert War:
September 4, 2010, 9:01 amPerhaps the author could explore the REAL Covert War being waged by the New Liberals/Socialists and funded through the back-door, shrouded in secrecy (no wonder Beck is so hated), and RAMMED down our throats by George “crash the economy, so I can get richer” Soros.
Just sayin’…
Wildman says:
Rasmussen Reports published the results of their poll May 4, 2007. According to their press release, “Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.”, “Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.” and “Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.” [16]
September 4, 2010, 9:29 amMartinned says:
I made that very point in my next comment. It’s a plague on both their houses. It doesn’t make politics interesting, it makes politics dysfunctional. 125 days after the start of the fiscal year, the Governor and the Legislature of New York finally agreed on a budget last month. That’s no way to run a country.
September 4, 2010, 9:44 amMartinned says:
…and with conservatives in charge, the rich get richer, the middle class stays the same and the poor get poorer. So what’s new?
September 4, 2010, 9:52 amrkf says:
I have not completed reading of the article and lack any prior knowledge of the Kochs.
However, as to the intersection of the Koch’s business interests and their philosophy, Ms. Mayer’s article describes their core business as oil refining. The application of antitrust law to that industry has been the subject of great controversy, with competing governmental reports about the effects of the regular approval of mergers and intense market concentration in that industry. The libertarian ideals that have dominated Chicago school antitrust jurisprudence have influenced regulators in sympathetic administrations to approve almost all mergers in this industry and to believe that markets will always curtail or correct any negative effects. I believe, and at least some studies have shown, that this predisposition is fallacious.
I’m not certain if Ms. Mayer’s article wil get to this, but if the Kochs are heavily into oil refining, the regulatory regimen that exists has been heavily influenced by libertarian ideals to their benefit and to the public’s detriment.
September 4, 2010, 9:52 amrkf says:
Also, I think this blog entry misses the thrust of her argument in application to current politics.
With respect to the effect of their work during the Obama Administration, she submits that the Kochs are covertly directing “tea party energy”, for lack of a better term (I concede crude oversimplification), to link together various specified antiregulatory initiatives that benefit their interests tha the Tea Partiers would not otherwise care about. The proverbial “useful idiots” argument. How valid that charge is, I can’t say. But that is her charge, and some of the argument in this blog post rebuts arguments she is not necessarily making
September 4, 2010, 10:03 amMartinned says:
My mistake. The analysis doesn’t actually turn on whether the market is a monopoly or an oligopoly. All that matter is that the suppliers can charge a price over marginal costs. The higher the markup, the greater the deadweight loss. This is easier to demonstrate in using a monopoly market, hence the shorthand. In reality, not even government created monopolies are true monopolies, since every product competes against every other product. Hence the downward-sloping demand curve, etc. The market power of U2 is limited by my willingness to buy some other guy’s music instead. (etc…)
September 4, 2010, 10:05 amMark Field says:
Yes, that was my point, and you even quoted it: “The legal system expressly recognizes that corporations qua corporations have interests. … the law still adopts legal doctrines which treat the corporate entity as a “person” having distinct interests.”
It does so in other ways as well, e.g., attorney/client privilege.
Whether these are legal fictions or they try to account for intrinsic flaws in the corporate structure (agency issues), the fact is that our society treats corporations as having interests qua corporation.
September 4, 2010, 10:15 amrpt says:
Actually, the middle class is not staying the same; there is only one small group whose condition is improving over time now.
September 4, 2010, 11:43 amrpt says:
But Koch is quoted in the article saying he controls everything he funds. If the quote is accurate, and it has been been asserted otherwise, then he controls the AFP part of the Tea Party movement.
September 4, 2010, 11:49 amDesiderius says:
The Kochs are the liberal progressives.
The zombified corpse of 20th Century big gummint/labor/business that calls itself liberal and progressive these days has become its farcical opposite.
September 4, 2010, 11:54 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
No; Mayer tries to make it sound as if he said that, but what he actually said was that he stops funding organizations that don’t do what he wants — which, come to think of it, is true of every single person on the planet who has ever donated money to anything. Mayer wants people to think it’s sinister, but would you give money to the ACLU (assuming that’s your preference) if they endorsed, say, warrantless wiretapping and the repeal of the civil rights act?
September 4, 2010, 12:04 pmrpt says:
Of course, such a market has never existed and will never exist.
September 4, 2010, 12:05 pmnick056 says:
David,
I understand the difference and tried to edit “Koch-owned company” to “Koch-founded organization” but the software was not cooperating. It distracts from but doesn’t alter my point, because in both cases the Americans for Prosperity Foundation employee is being paid by an organization Koch created and funds. Also, Mayer’s phrase is not “corporate sponsorship” but “corporate funder,” which describes Koch. You’re accusing her of misunderstanding or manipulating the definition of “corporate” because she describes Koch as the corporate funder for the summit in question?
In your view, someone who founds and subsidizes the activities of an organization whose chief strategy involves training and educating a second organization, can claim not to financially support that second organization in any way, and you do not describe this as covert.
This reminds me of the West Virginia judge who refused to recuse himself from a case involving someone who’d launched a campaign to get the judge elected. In that case, you felt that because the Massey CEO hadn’t directly funded the judge’s election campaign — he had essentially just sponsored his own pro-election ad campaign for the judge — there was no conflict of interest requiring recusal. The CEO didn’t write a check to the judge’s election campaign, so his considerable expenditures meant to get the judge in office did not have a corrupting effect on the judge’s ability to objectively decide a case involving Massey, and did not deprive the other party of due process.
That was your position then. Here, founding organization A, whose chief strategy includes promoting organization B, and claiming not to support organization B, is entirely overt. In evidence of this proposition, you link to a group A’s website which — hilariously — discusses the grassroots nature of the billionaire-funded enterprise. You’re proving Mayer’s point: the activities become more covert the more people are willing to say that once following the money involves a three-step flowchart, the source of the money is sufficiently removed from the beneficiary for everything to be independent.
September 4, 2010, 12:14 pmDesiderius says:
rpt,
“Of course, such a market has never existed and will never exist.”
Corporate welfare is over, if you want it.
Why don’t you?
Who’s paying you not to? Hmmmm…
September 4, 2010, 12:34 pmDesiderius says:
Nick,
“This reminds me of the West Virginia judge”
No, by your logic McGraw would have had to recuse himself from every case before the court, since he was bought and paid for by the (hugely powerful in WV) trial bar.
Material interest is not identical with philosophical interest.
September 4, 2010, 12:37 pmtwo levels says:
There’s two levels of Koch defenders – first there are the Bernsteins/Somins, etc. who have directly or indirectly been on the Koch payroll.
Then there are the leg humpers like David Nieporent.
I can understand the first level. They need to keep sucking off the Kochs to get money, but what do the Nieporents get out of this?
September 4, 2010, 12:45 pmtwo levels says:
“This reminds me of the West Virginia judge”
No, by your logic McGraw would have had to recuse himself from every case before the court, since he was bought and paid for by the (hugely powerful in WV) trial bar.
———————
Yes, because receiving contributions from an interest group when you are a State AG is identical to a Judge who receives seven figure campaign contributions from (in the case of the morbidly obese justice whose name escapes me) or taking vacations with a litigant who has a case currently pending before you.
You’re a dumbass.
September 4, 2010, 12:49 pmrpt says:
A good description of money laundering.
September 4, 2010, 1:05 pmDave M. says:
I wouldn’t assume that much. Under a purely libertarian ideology, corporations would be only private organizations not backed by limited liability through the power of the state. Let’s also remember that it was government that created corporations (Dutch East India Co., I’m looking at you), not free markets.
As such, libertarians opposed to the power of the state should naturally hold a view that is anti-corporate, since if corporations couldn’t exist without limited liability, then what’s the point of having them?
Further, if one holds to the view–to quote JFK–that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” then one could equally argue that JFK was pro-corporate.
Even if a concept is only adhered to by one ideology, the fact that they believe that idea would benefit everyone is not a sufficient warrant to claim their idea is pro-corporate.
September 4, 2010, 1:06 pmrpt says:
What’s next, a link to “Revolution”? How do I get on the Koch $$ train?
September 4, 2010, 1:07 pmDesiderius says:
rpt,
I aim to please. Makes more sense than the anti-Koch arguments on this thread.
September 4, 2010, 1:30 pmDesiderius says:
two levels,
“Yes, because receiving contributions from an interest group when you are a State AG is identical to a Judge who receives seven figure campaign contributions from (in the case of the morbidly obese justice whose name escapes me) or taking vacations with a litigant who has a case currently pending before you.”
McGraw was already sitting on the court. I lived in WV at the time of the race, which served as a referendum on how much the WV populace wished to be dominated by the trial bar. McGraw was the bar candidate, and funded thereby, Benjamin the anti-bar, and likewise funded by those with that philosophy. The bar lost, and you’re parroting their sour grapes argument. As for the USSC, homer nods.
BTW, WV is still solidly Democratic and behind Manchin for broadly liberal and progressive reasons in the traditional understanding of those terms, for those concerned about such matters. The little guy is not blind to the unconcern for him on the part of those who purport to defend him and his interests.
“You’re a dumbass.”
Less salient than likely.
September 4, 2010, 1:38 pmDesiderius says:
two levels,
“what do the Nieporents get out of this?”
Accurate picture of reality?
Overrated, no doubt, but occasionally of some use.
September 4, 2010, 1:40 pmDesiderius says:
rpt,
“How do I get on the Koch $$ train?”
Start making sense.
September 4, 2010, 1:42 pmtwo levels says:
Desiderius
You’re an ignorant fuckwit.
Blankenship funneled over $1m into Benjamin’s campaign for the seat on the WV supreme ct while Blankenship had a case currently pending before the court.
Blankenship vacationed with another fuckwit supreme court justice while same case was pending.
Your limp-dick response to this is “But, but, but McGraw recieved money from trial lawyers.”
The fact that you think those two situations are worthy of being compared demonstrates your dumbassedness.
September 4, 2010, 1:55 pmMark Field says:
This is substantially what I said above, yet I’m the one who’s not the libertarian, and those who are libertarians (Chris Green, ShelbyC, maybe others) keep defending corporations.
BTW, I would have linked to the previous posts, but the software isn’t letting me do it. Not sure what the problem is.
September 4, 2010, 1:57 pmMark Field says:
Geez dude, lighten up. Desiderius may be wrong — I think he is — but you’re not convincing anyone by personal attacks on someone who’s a reasonable guy.
September 4, 2010, 2:13 pmPaul A'Barge says:
You know what Jane Mayer needs?
Well, it sounds like Koch but it’s spelled differently.
September 4, 2010, 3:14 pmrpt says:
Wrong thread; that’s for the Law Fare one. How about “Take Me To The River”?
September 4, 2010, 3:28 pmDesiderius says:
MF,
“someone who’s a reasonable guy.”
TY for the kinds words, but I fear that your standards are slipping. Would a reasonable guy carry on a conversation with someone like two levels?
As for ignorant fuckwits, he asked for it.
Perhaps now one can understand why someone might want to contribute to McGraw’s defeat, aside from seeking to buy influence. Occam’s razor.
September 4, 2010, 3:28 pmDesiderius says:
But enough WV politics.
Bottom line on the Kochs:
For anyone truly liberal or progressive (and I know and work with a lot of great people in both categories), the Kochs are not the droids you’re looking for.
In going after them, you’re at best tilting at windmills, and quite possibly engaging in friendly fire of an especially destructive sort.
September 4, 2010, 3:36 pmrpt says:
Go find a good version of Koch-aine on Youtube.
September 4, 2010, 4:22 pmAnon says:
A Diet Coke?
September 4, 2010, 4:50 pmHm. says:
Yes, because male chauvinism is always a good counter-argument.
P.S., it’s pronounced ‘coke’. ;)
September 4, 2010, 5:00 pmnick056 says:
RPT,
In other contexts, it kind of is. But in re-reading what I wrote, I wouldn’t say the Koch spokesperson is claiming there’s no financial support for the Tea Parties in any way – she’s claiming no direct links. Being thorough requires being careful about the exact position of the Koch spokesperson.
But the whole point of the story is that when you design a political non-profit to provide support to a headlining force in the conservative movement while keeping your name – and that of the Koch companies — several steps distant from the those headlining forces, of course the links of connection become less direct and more diverse. That’s the entire point of the exercise.
Desiderius,
I’m happy for you that your favored candidate in the WV judicial race beat his opponent, whom you seem to dislike. (Maybe for good reason, I don’t know anything about him.) But I’m not happy for you — or for anyone — that your favored candidate turned out to be capable of astonishing ethical lapses. To put it mildly. And as Ilya said about Mayer, while I can’t comment on the rest of his record, a giant mistake like that fails to inspire me with confidence.
Paul A’Barge
I believe your wife spells it T-I-N-Y.
September 4, 2010, 5:26 pmdesiderious fuckwit says:
The only slight difference between those two scenarios being that Blankenship had an actual, multi-million dollar appeal pending.
September 4, 2010, 6:38 pmByomtov says:
Wildman,
As has been endlessly discussed on many threads, the question Rasmussen asked was ambiguous, and could easily be interpreted as asking whether Bush was aware of the danger, or likelihood, of some attack by Al-Qaeda. Since he received warnings about this possibility, it would not be crazy for someone who interpreted the question that way to answer “yes.”
I don’t expect to convince you or anyone else about this, which is why I wrote “never mind” in my previous column.
September 4, 2010, 7:14 pmDesiderius says:
“The only slight difference between those two scenarios being that Blankenship had an actual, multi-million dollar appeal pending.”
The trial bar had an entire docket. Your point?
September 4, 2010, 9:25 pmyankee says:
I’m not a libertarian, and I agree that corporations are creatures of the state, but I think your position regarding limited liability is fallacious. Limited liability is a creation of the state, but only because liability itself is a creation of the state. The principle that by default passive investors in a business enterprise are “partners” and all partners have unlimited liability for the business’s obligations isn’t a law of nature: it’s a rule created by the government. We could just as easily have a default rule that passive investors in a business are not individually liable for the business’s obligations.
September 5, 2010, 1:02 amUpon Further Review says:
If you’ll consider the observations of a newcomer to this forum, I believe the entire debate has taken on an air of academic sophistication and subtlety that it doesn’t really deserve.
My take on the Koch brothers is that they’re the left’s new Halliburton. In other words, the Koch brothers suddenly matter because the liberal/progressive movement has been taking it on the chin lately as a result of a public backlash against Obama’s big-government policies such as ObamaCare and the takeover of the automakers.
Therefore, the left is dusting off its shopworn Saul Alinsky playbook and attempting to win the debate by changing the subject. This distraction formula has had some success over the years, notably when Bill Clinton was on the hot seat and his defenders launched a media blitz that essentially amounted to “KenStarrKenStarrKenStarrKenStarrKenStarr.”
A similar concerted effort against Bush and Cheney boiled down to “HalliburtonHalliburtonHalliburtonHalliburton.”
But the left’s latest predicament — widespread disenchantment with big government spending and programs that give government more power over the individual, such as ObamaCare — has not responded well to Alinsky tactics.
How do you “pick a target and freeze it” if there’s no real target to pick? Sure, progressives have taken their best shots at Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, but neither of those individuals is truly the leader of the Tea Party; rather, the rallies they attend and sometimes oversee simply serve as focal points where disgruntled citizens with Tea Party mindsets can meet and share energy.
Another attempted Alinsky takedown involved trying to paint Tea Party protesters as racists. But Andrew Breitbart out-Alinskyed the Alinskyites by offering $100,000 (still unclaimed) for proof that any Tea Party member screamed racial epithets at black Congressmen.
Although the “Tea Party = racism” narrative is still clinging to life, the Koch brothers represent the newest and most promising (in their minds, anyway) target of panicked progressives who worry that their 15 minutes of D.C. power are almost up.
You can see this deflection strategy played out all over the blogosphere — virtually any mention of public outrage against ObamaCare, out-of-control federal spending and other Tea Party issues suddenly brings a knee-jerk response amounting to “but the Tea Party isn’t a grassroots movement at all … it’s funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t you know who they are?”
So … will changing the subject deter the wave that threatens to wash away the Democrats’ control of Congress? Doubtful.
The problem progressives have is that average citizens are so alarmed and incensed about trillion-dollar federal deficits and increased government control over their personal medical decisions that they’re unlikely to be swayed by a conspiracy theory that, even if it were true, amounts to inside baseball.
Really, who cares whether a couple of guys with lots of money support the Tea Party movement to one degree or another? The legitimacy of the issue — way too much government — supersedes the legitimacy of the movement.
Thus, even if the entire Tea Party movement could somehow be discredited, along with Palin and Beck, it still wouldn’t make average citizens smack their own foreheads and exclaim, “Gosh, I guess those trillion-dollar deficits and government control of my health care weren’t such a big deal after all! By golly, I’m going to pull that big Democratic lever this November!”
Anyway … that’s why the Koch brothers have suddenly become the left’s new Halliburton, particularly in the media. You didn’t really believe JournoList died, did you?
September 5, 2010, 8:41 amMark Field says:
I think this proves too much. It may not be a law of nature which makes people responsible for their obligations, but it’s pretty hard to imagine how any economic system could function in its absence. Without enforcement of contracts, there is nothing but self-help.
September 5, 2010, 10:34 amByomtov says:
Mark Field,
I think this proves too much. It may not be a law of nature which makes people responsible for their obligations, but it’s pretty hard to imagine how any economic system could function in its absence. Without enforcement of contracts, there is nothing but self-help.
I agree, but would go further. It may not be a law of nature that people are responsible for their obligations, but it’s pretty close, especially when the liability arises out of harm doen to another. Just because a legal system doesn’t deal with these obligations doesn’t mean they won’t be dealt with. Indeed, I think much early law attempted to define proper compensation. I’m no Talmudist, but I know the Talmud, for example devotes considerable effort to this.
September 5, 2010, 11:41 amgeokstr says:
Upon Further Review:
Welcome. Well said, and come back often.
It’s nice to have someone else willing to smack down the left on this site with the Big Picture. While there are plenty of conservative/libertarians here, many are lawyers and policy wonks, who would rather debate endlessly over whether the bark on the particular branch of the specific tree addressed in the post should be properly called gnarled or knurled or whether the tree is deciduous or evergreen, while the leftists are busy torching the entire forest around them with flamethrowers.
September 5, 2010, 12:51 pmArthur Kirkland says:
One rarely sees a better explanation of why many right-wingers prefer poorly educated, inexperienced, barely literate, superstition-over-science, intellectually non-elite voices. Thank you for providing this.
September 5, 2010, 2:23 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
This begs the question. Yes, enforcement of contracts is required for economic systems to function; nobody (sane) denies that. But Yankee has it exactly right — whether these actually are “their obligations” is the issue.
If you start up a business, there’s no obvious reason why me investing some money with you necessarily means that my assets should be available to your creditors.
September 5, 2010, 3:11 pmByomtov says:
David M. Nieporent,
If you start up a business, there’s no obvious reason why me investing some money with you necessarily means that my assets should be available to your creditors.
I think you are stating it too broadly. No, your assets shouldn’t be available to my creditors. But maybe they should be available to the creditors of the business operation, which is a separate entity, to some degree. After all, the profits of the business are available to you, pro rata, in unlimited amounts. So intuitively it does not seem unreasonable that you should be responsible, again pro rata, for unlimited losses as well.
That strikes me as a more natural arrangement than limited liability. And the fairly late arrival of limited liability on the economic scene reinforces that.
September 5, 2010, 3:36 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Just as there is even less reason those assets should not be available to creditors.
September 5, 2010, 4:33 pmrpt says:
Socialize the costs, privatize the benefits.
September 5, 2010, 6:41 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I’m not clear how you think this is “socializing” anything.
September 5, 2010, 8:15 pmTonetel says:
Well then, this must really bum you out…
” It turns out that 36 percent of Democrats claim to have communed with the dead, and that 19 percent believe in casting a curse on someone using the “evil eye.” Think about that: According Pew, more Democrats believe in the “evil eye” than Americans believe Obama is a Muslim.
The fact is you can find 20 percent of people anywhere who believe in almost anything.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/23/AR2010082302480.html
September 5, 2010, 9:18 pmByomtov says:
Tonetel,
Actually, the whole survey pretty much bums me out. So does Marc Thiessen, BTW.
I do think it’s interesting that we tend to dismiss certain “mystical experiences” as absurd, but accept others as not just reasonable but normal. If you think your grandfather spoke to you from the Great Beyond you’re a nut case, but if you think Jesus did you’re just a devout Christian. I’m not sure why this is.
September 5, 2010, 10:01 pmUpon Further Review says:
Thanks very much for your kind welcome, Geokstr, as well as your spot-on analysis of the time-honored “Drown the message with minutiae” technique.
I tend to call B.S. on leftist misdirection plays whenever I see them, and the Koch brothers “controversy” is only the latest example. Suddenly, their names are being invoked all over the blogosphere as “proof” that hundreds of thousands of average citizens aren’t really outraged at Obama’s policies after all — they’re simply hired guns (like the posse of enforcers in the movie “Pale Rider”) or clueless pawns.
Yet instead of challenging the premise or naming the game, we get lured into playing Trivial Pursuit via endless debates over issues such as what the meaning of “secret” is.
Or, as you pointed out, “whether the tree is deciduous or evergreen.” Which brings to mind Monty Python’s classic “Dennis Moore” skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbtVaTWs6II
As John Cleese reminds us, Geokstr, we need to keep in mind that “It’s a hold-up, not a botany lesson.”
September 6, 2010, 8:27 amUpon Further Review says:
And thank you for proving my point: It’s always easier to run a misdirection play than mount a cogent defense of your position.
Name-calling is but one of the many shopworn amateurish techniques that pack the dusty progressive playbook.
Ditto with loaded questions like “Why do you hate America?”
September 6, 2010, 8:38 amrkf says:
These arguments miss the point, as they conflate debt with equity.
If you loan a company money, your assets are not at risk. If you “invest” in return for an ownership interest, you are an owner. An owner of a business through a noncorporate form is liable because s/he and the business have no separate existence.
The corporate form permits investment with limited liability. These arguments miss the point
September 6, 2010, 2:11 pmmattski says:
Yes, but when tumescent it says “Ticonderoga, NY”
September 6, 2010, 8:21 pmSasan says:
Wow, the leftists are so whiney… “Oh my God, evil Koch and his think tanks want to wage war against Obama”!
September 16, 2010, 11:24 pmWhat about the other corporatists like Big Pharma, Goldman Sachs etc… that donated to him? Are they waging war on him? Lets not pretend that Obama is against corporatists or even Big Oil, after all BP donated to him.
Also everything the original poster said is correct and obviously economically illiterate leftists will label it as opinion.
It is obviously not in Koch’s interest to support the free market as the free market puts everyone on a level playing field and reduces the compliance costs for small business which hurt the market share of big business. Regulation helps big business as they have the economies of scale to be able to absorb the compliance cost. Big Steel was not in favour of free trade and low tariffs as it meant more competition from abroad.
Companies lobby regularly to get tax breaks, grants, contracts and subsidies. Wal-mart receives 1.2 million in subsidies from the federal government. Deregulation of the trucking industry broke up the big monopolies and reduced the cost so it really takes a economic illiterate of extreme magnitude that laissez faire is “pro corporate”. Laissez faire is amoral and neutral, that is the point. I know neutrality might by a new thing for you leftists but there you go.
As far as an organization like Cato go, they have two journals (Cato Journal and Regulation) which are peer reviewed and were said to be one of the most scholarly think tanks in the US (that it includes left wing think tanks like the Roosevelt Institute) by the University of Pensylvania. They even have Brad Delong (a leftist) on CatoUnbound. They have a handbook on what the government should do to end Corporate Welfare, in their articles they name and shame regularly and as a result there funding has gradually been cut from certain corporations. They have gradually broken away from Koch and now their funding is comprises mostly of individuals (77%), foundation (?) and corporations (3%). Compare that MoveOn or Media Matters and you get a different picture.
Also George Soros was never open about his contributions to think tanks and never shouted about it. It was right wing nut jobs like Fox News etc… that made him famous and I remember him defending himself against the hate. The fact that Koch owns Reason and Cato is no secret among the libertarian community and the rivalry between Rothbard and Koch is infamous. Infact if you bothered to type in “Cato” in Wikipedia you would immediately find his name in the first paragraph! Also Cato make their funders known.
You can attribute Cato and Reason’s position as being ideological and both were heavily against Bush and McCain so you leftists will have to reconcile that. Both publications took a libertarian stance on everything and haven’t contradicted those stances in the favour of corporate money. Koch may be a LINO but from what I have read Cato and Reason are not. The only thing I disagree on with both publications is global warming which is definitely real but it is obvious that Cato and Reason denied it for so long as it would mean government interference which is against their ideology.
David desJardins says:
The strongest evidence for the “self-serving” nature of Koch contributions is their fight against climate change legislation, which happens to be among their biggest activities. It is not a libertarian ideal to allow unfettered pollution of the commons. (Cap-and-trade is, in fact, an attempt to implement a *libertarian* solution to the commons—turn the right to pollute into something that can be monetized and subjected to market forces.) You can’t come up with a libertarian explanation for why the Koch brothers would spend millions of dollars to try to convince Californians not to reduce CO2 emissions in their state. However, it’s easy to understand when you realize that it’s bad for their businesses.
People are good at finding a way to believe what it is in their interests to believe. It may well be that the Kochs have convinced themselves that CO2 emissions should be unfettered because it’s in their economic interest, i.e., they are deluded rather than hypocritical. But the consequences are the same for the rest of us.
September 18, 2010, 4:12 pmJay says:
Ilya – how can you even write this article, especially since you are on their website and payroll? Do you just ignore the Kochs spending almost 3 times what ExxonMobil did to lobby against clean-energy legislation? What about them being among the biggest polluters in the United States? How many times did they dump toxins into waterways and not get caught? It’s ashame there is any avenue for you to get your drivel out to the public.
September 20, 2010, 4:20 pmSharon Riley says:
Wow! Have never been to this site before and as an average gal off the street was a little taken aback – in 226 comments it seemed what started off as an intellectual p…ing contest (“secret”, “covert”, def. of, use of) turned into just a p…ing contest (a contentious WV judicial case)! If most of you are lawyers, I am a little concerned – a daughter and son-in-law are in law school! So, what is the definition of “is”? haha! My take on things:
The Koch Bros. are clearly free to give money to anyone/group that supports their causes, to create 30+ think tanks and foundations, to buy lobbyists as every group does and even, apparently, to buy GMU! This is America. I don’t see how any thinking person can be surprised that they are behind Prop. 23 in CA – they are protecting their business interests and have spent years and years and lots of bucks trying to legitimize their “global warming is a hoax” agenda. So, why would Jane Mayer, an investigate reporter who has been around
use a sensationalized word like “covert” which clearly, upsets so many folks, to describe what could be considered SOP for the powerful (politicians, businesses, govt., etc). Perhaps, she’s been out there in the real world and understands the seriousness of the situation. I am out here and I do understand. Here’s an example.
Last summer I took my 16 year old daughter to a “town hall” style meeting held at the Clark Co. Amphitheater and hosted by Rep. Brian Baird. Thought it would be a nice “civics in action”, mother/daughter deal. It was the most disgusting, pathetic, gut wrenching display of angry, hate filled, bitter, old white people who came to “take their country back” (disclosure – Clark Co. is predominantly white so that part wasn’t surprising). Rep. Baird who is an intelligent man (though, we disagree), had actually read the health care bill and came to discuss it with his constituents. Yeah, that worked real well. Screaming, frothing, really insulting people. My daughter was so frightened we left. The Tea Party folks were thrilled – Brian Baird chose not to run and David Hedrick (an inarticulate, ex Marine, supposedly disabled and with a military record he embellished) made a U-Tube video and got interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox. All of this hatred spewing forth from misguided, partially informed, “patriots”. It showed clearly what I think was the most relevant part of Mayer’s piece (bottom paragraph, page 5, paraphrased from Lewis Powell):
” The greatest threat to free enterprise, is not Communism or the New Left, but rather “respectable elements of society”- intellectuals, journalists and scientists. To defeat them, he wrote, business leaders needed to wage a long term, unified campaign to change public opinion”. I think, sadly, that the Koch’s have done this well. The consequences, given the angry mob that I saw, do not bode well for pundits, puppeteers or bloggers alike. Just saying.
September 27, 2010, 6:03 pm