Finding a Common Goal

Charles Koch and Brian Hooks joined Sarah and David to discuss their new book, Believe ...

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Charles Koch and Brian Hooks joined Sarah and David to discuss their new book, Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, which is about social entrepreneurship, the principles of human progress, and empowering people to discover their gifts. On today’s show, Koch and Hooks explain how finding common ground with people across the ideological spectrum has helped reorient their approach to public policy reform as it relates to the criminal justice system, education, and more.

Show Notes:

–Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World by Charles G. Koch and Brian Hooks.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Patrick

    Very enjoyable, thanks David and Sarah.

    I think many comments here have missed the point.

    It all starts with: “What should be the role of education in a free society?”
    The Koch answer is: “It should be to identify and support a child’s interests and talents as soon as they reasonably manifest.”
    We don’t do this well. We teach the same things thru age 18, and then the 18-year old decides what to do. By that point, so many kids have already checked out.

    I don’t know when “one size fits all” education should end (age 13?), and neither does Charles Koch. What he *is* saying is that it should probably end before age 18, and the government should not stand in the way of experimentation. It should foster the experiments, and scale the successes.

    Just like so many areas, the entrenched interests of how we do things today are wrongly incented to keep the status quo, instead of rightly incented to seek improvements.

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    The Stray Goose

    Beware of the Libertarians who rail against a 'one-size-fits-all approach to education'. Notice that Mr. Koch went on to not answer the question. I don't like our current education system either, but doing a 'tailored-to-each-student' education student doesn't translate to large school systems. It just doesn't.

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    Scarisbrick

    I thought this was great. Koch-haters gonna hate, I guess, but I find many of these complainers' desire for government solutions to everything to be short-sighted and stale. The entrepreneurs they're talking about encouraging are people who may have skills to help others but don't have a context in which to efficiently do it. Many of the comments here seem to grow out of a willful misunderstanding of what was being discussed. Being skeptical of a libertarian approach is fine, but dismissing any efforts that aren't bureaucratic and taxpayer-funded as "dismantling public education" is just silly.

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    Bill

    For any who have worked as a mere minion in the bowels of the corporate environment, Mr. Koch comes across as just another "idea man" whose "visions" simply enrich the ophthalmic industry as its practitioners endeavor to re-orient our rolled up eyes back into their proper position.
    I can't count how many "vision sessions" I attended over my 40+ year career that almost exactly mimicked Mr. Koch's exhortations to "achieve your full potential" by "focusing on skillset integrity" and "innovation through personal responsibility." There's only so much of that claptrap you can hear before you flip the bozo bit on the entire management chain.

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    James Spiller

    I thought that this was Sarah’s best interview so far.

    The gentle but clear pushback, emphasizing the symbolic and demonstrative success of the school choice movement not leading to substantive success in which the reforms became widely adopted, was excellent. I didn’t think that Koch had a meaningful answer to it; it appears that just as he did with school choice, he will push some pilot programs here and call it a day.

    Likewise, the question about precisely how Koch’s efforts to bypass the teacher’s unions, a force on the left so powerful as to essentially define the term, might be considered non-partisan was excellent and was not given so much as a fig leaf of an answer (other than agreeing with David’s point that LeBron might reshape the world).

    It appears that the Kochs are abandoning their efforts to make practical change. I hope their artistic and other sincerely non-political efforts flourish. I guess it would be conceivable that a sufficiently Koch friendly political figure in the future might re-harness their efforts for good, or that they might sense the weakness of the teacher’s unions in a future, post-covid, moment. Their help for the right to work movement has done wonderful things for the country, and it seems possible that a properly funded effort might make a real difference in the medium term future.

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    Rajeev

    For trying to project an open-mindedness, it still sounded absolutist to me. I guess maybe I lost interest in the presentation from the guests that maybe some of their message didn't come across to me as intended. Seemed as though Sarah pushed them several times about unions and they dodged what appeared to be a straight-forward question. I'd rather have heard a more direct answer regardless of what it was.

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  7. Eric B

    Not adding much or any good with my comment today but the other comments give me a sense of why I've never heard anything good about the Koch brothers. What I've listened to so far sounds like:
    - Old white rich republican just decided he needed to be less partisan by doing things his way and involving energetic and talented youth to serve his business partners.
    - Old white rich republican has a change of heart right about the time that Republican is bad for the brand, so he'll put a small swoosh on the product rather than the big swoosh.
    - Something about the education system not serving kids. Wait, it's not? Well golly gee. Lucky he's there to help give them the kind of education they need to serve his broader interests.

    Look I might be wrong here, I'm wrong a lot. Additionally this felt like it was getting too close to rich old white man 'helps' inner city youth to improve his legacy and fortune. I hope I'm wrong, and I acknowledge fully that I have not contributed constructively to discourse today, and for that I'm sorry.

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      James Spiller

      The Kochs have put enormous amounts of money into improving education for poor kids. They’ve had some success; there’s a lot of schools that have done good things with their money, and other schools that have done good things with programs they helped to promote. They don’t receive meaningful financial benefit from it.

      I agree that he appears concerned about his legacy. He always has, but it appears that Trump has made him feel more uncomfortable with the partisan elements of that.

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  8. Richard Greydanus

    This still sounds quite partisan. The "vision" articulated here is just a softened version of the old agenda of dismantling the public education. If they actually wanted to bridge the partisan divide, wouldn't they have addressed the elephant in the room, public education, instead of pretending the promotion of private/charter education is an automatically bi-partisan issue.

    What the participants in the conversation don't want to confront is that a lot of jobs are going to be uninspiring - and that's okay, a job isn't everything. The whole mantra about "success" masks a profound contempt for "unsuccessful" people - who a categorized as such according to how success is defined. Want proof of the contempt: the examples they use are Einstein and the Wright Bros. The example they should use is of the anonymous father or mother who works hard, builds a home, raises a family, contributes to their community, who never comes to the attention of a wider public, etc.

    This whole conversation struck me as intellectually lazy and insincere. The vision of a public education was not to offer handholds for those who, according to their private means, were in a position to "rise up." That would happen in the natural course of things, as parent's nurtured their children's gifts, as teacher's encouraged their development. The vision was that we collectively would "lift" everyone up to aid what is already occurring in the natural course of things.

    Two thumbs down.

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    1. Avatar photo
      DougAz

      Add my two thumbs down as well. Einstein and the Wright Brothers grew up in relative wealth and comfort. High wealth compares to me.

      Don't forget that Charles Koch father Fred not only obtained wealth from both Stalin and Hitler, Fred Koch was essentially a founder of the white Supremacist racist John Birch terrorist organization.

      Straight line from the Koch to QAnon, to Repunlican Representatives Marjorie Green and Lauren Bobert.

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        James Spiller

        I share your lack of enthusiasm for the Koch side of the interview. I think the rest of your analysis, though, conflates everything you dislike and thus treats disparate things equivalently.

        I agree that the John Birch Society was awful, but the rest seems more problematic; a defining issue of the Birchers for its early years was a desire to increase US support for the Republic of China (today liking Asians is a ridiculous defense against racism, but in the mid-20th century the model minority trope had not attached itself to the Chinese). Their arguments against civil rights laws were mostly not racist arguments, at a time when there were people more socially mainstream than themselves who were making racial arguments. There were racists among them, but the focus of the movement was against white communists. Later Birchers became focused on immigration, but Fred Koch had left JBS by then.

        I don’t see in what sense they were a terrorist group. They were awful, and their involvement with Goldwater’s early ‘64 primary campaign remains a significant black mark against those who revere him. But the institution did not bomb people, despite this being an era when political killing was unusually popular.

        QAnon and the Kochs are both nexuses for crazy people, but I’m not sure I see the straight line, other than both being bad, both combining elements of strident non-partisanship with elements of strident partisanship, and both being anti-government. Likewise, other than a small donation to Green that was withdrawn, I don’t see a connection between the Kochs and Green and Boebert.

        While the Kochs have often supported lunatic causes, lunatic causes are not a monolith, and the Kochs have often been on the side of the less awful lunatic cause. In particular, they’ve generally found themselves on the anti-racist side of fights about race in limited government circles. This helped lead to their being kicked out of the Libertarian Party in the 1980s.

        Condemn the Kochs for this vapid interview, for funding crackpottery, making the Tea Party an uglier phenomenon than it had to be, for all sorts of stuff. But if you’re going to level charges at them it seems like it would be more polite to ground them in truth.

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          DougAz

          As always, James, you are polite and well spoken. I find myself, more vocal on my Progressive Liberal views. I just asked my wife of 43 years, if I was more conservative back at our start, and she said no, I'm just more willing to be experessive about them - so, here is my attempt James, kind sir:

          Why I Call Charles Koch – a Terrorist.

          A Terrorist inflicts Terror. A Terrorist causes Harm. But Terrorist do not only need to be the creator of direct harm, they can be the almost out of sight concrete foundation of horrid actions:

          Koch supports, funds, started, endorsed:
          ALEC – The insidious organization that informs Republican State Legislators on “Model Legislation” that is onerous and has damaged democracy (gerrymandering to insanity, for example)
          American’s for Prosperity – Right Wing PAC
          Club for Growth - Money for QAnon Bobert and Greene
          Climate Denier Fake Science – Funding bought off scientists to create fake-science denying climate change - inaction here - is/will kill people. Koch would recind the Clean Water and Clean Air act, both which regulate Koch oil, chemical, polymer and plastic businesses. These two Nixon signed acts have saved the lives of over 1 million Americans.
          Tea Party – Funding – Obama and Clinton Hate – Making ENEMIES of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and promoting that venomization for Republicans but especially Hate-FOX-TV, Limbaugh, Savage and Members of the Republican Party in Congress

          So, from Stalin and Hitler, to the John Birch Society, wrapped in the polite veneers of philanthropy, Charles Koch has seeded Hate in America, has made Liberals and Progressives, Social Security, Medicare, - Enemies in the eyes of millions of fellow Right wing and Conservative Americans.

          So, I will call Charles Koch, the responsible man, for his terrorist-culture creations.

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            James Spiller

            Do you have any dictionaries that support your definition of terrorism as including peaceful disagreement with you about public policy?

            I don’t know why you put quote marks around model laws. Do you believe that model laws are unusual or that what ALEC produces is something different to the product of dozens of other state legislator supporting institutions, like bar associations, professional associations, advocacy groups, and sometimes the Federal government? If it is different, how is it so? Is your objection to the topics that ALEC addresses? If so, are you familiar with the process by which legislators request support from them? It isn’t the Kochs who choose what seminars legislators request.

            I believe you are mistaken about the Club for Growth being a Koch funded institution, although people the Kochs work with support the Club.

            Do you have a link for your clean air act repeal claim?

            Are you aware that all caps in an online context is a way of denoting shouting? Obama has personally praised the Kochs for putting country ahead of partisanship in a way that seems surprising if they are his enemy, let alone a capitalized form thereof. I cannot imagine how you think they are responsible for Limbaugh or Fox.

            Then I see that you appear to also be holding Charles Koch responsible for Hitler and Stalin, I guess on the basis that his father did business with them. I’m not clear if you’re angry at Fred Koch for being too anti-communist or not anti-communist enough, but combining the complaints seems eccentric. Blaming Charles for his father’s business decisions before Charles was born seems uncharitable.

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            DougAz

            https://www.corp-research.org/koch_industries

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            DougAz

            https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/charles-koch-political-ascent-jane-mayer-213541

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    2. Richard Greydanus

      Just finishing the interview: not only does this strike me as intellectually lazy, if this is offered as a way to transcend partisanship, it's intellectually cowardly. At no point does it engage substantively with the arguments of people who defend education as a public good.

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    Angie

    Interesting...I am torn on Mr Koch..some things sound good, others I just don't understand or get how they help everyone that needs it...and I run into that if you aren't doing well, it is because you are a bad person in some way too...I guess it is just a bit too Libertarian to me in some ways?

    But, I find it fascinating to listen to

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      Angie

      PS: It is also hard not to remember his past in this case

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    DougAz

    Thanks for the listen. I am unchanged in my position that Charles Koch is an underlying reason for American partisanship and Alt-Right actions. Seriously. His father installed state of the art oil refineries for Stalin and Hitler both. He funds onerous climate denier science. He wants bottoms up opportunities and empowerment, but rejects social programs that work to create EQUAL opportunity and FAIR play in the opportunity space.

    Charles Kochs agenda has been self-indulgent and self-serving for decade after decade. If his approach to America was in place in the 1960s, when as a kid we needed food stamps and attended a public HS nearly equal to anythingin NY or Cambridg, I'd be nowhere.

    He perversely wields his billions in grotesque oligarchy style government and public policy influences.

    I'll take my Buffet, Soros and Gates all day long over Charles Koch.

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