Koch Industries, Cato Institute and Corporate Responsibility

Original Link: http://lacithedog.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/koch-industries-cato-institute-and-corporate-responsibility/

I was curious about this and decided to look up Koch Industries so see if they were public (shareholder owned) or a private corporation. Per Koch industries own site:

Koch Industries, Inc. is a privately held company based in Wichita, Kan

It also seems that Koch is run according to the principle of Market-Based Management, which is a Koch Industries registered trademark. And Charles Koch has quite a monopoly on that concept as well. Like libertarianism, Market-Based Management doesn’t seem to have much in the way of criticism located on the internet.

Interestingly enough, one can find that the talk of Market-Based Management and other capitalistic platitudes does come into criticism. Surprisingly enough from a member of the Koch family: Bill Koch.

the Koch family of Wichita, Kansas is among the richest in the United States, worth billions of dollars. Their oil company, Koch Industries, is bigger than Intel, Dupont or Prudential Insurance, and they own it lock stock and barrel. The trouble is a former employee says the brother who controls the company grew rich through fraud and theft, stealing from the taxpayers of the United States.

Unfortunately, for Koch Industries, that disgruntled former employee was Bill Koch, one of the Koch brothers.

It seems that the Cato Institute is an example of what I call the ladder principle in action. Their railing at “corporate welfare” while it seems that Koch was a beneficiary of such welfare.

And regulations?

Koch industries has faced other troubles with the government since the original broadcast of Blood and Oil on 60 Minutes. In April, Koch’s Petroleum Group was fined 20 million dollars after it released huge amounts of cancer-causing benzene from a Texas refinery and then tried to cover it up.

Just blame it on Government regulations!