Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, by Christopher Leonard, Simon & Schuster, available here.

Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, by Christopher Leonard, Simon & Schuster

Christopher Leonard uses the extraordinary account of Koch’s ascent to tell the story of modern corporate America. If you want to understand how the income divide widened, how progress stalled on climate change, and how corporate America bought the influence industry, you have to understand the story of Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in the world, a sprawling conglomerate whose operations span the entire landscape of the American economy.

For Kochland, Leonard devoted seven years to penetrating Koch Industries’ veil of secrecy. He spent hundreds of hours interviewing dozens of current and former Koch Industries employees, managers, whistle-blowers and senior executives—including Charles Koch. He talked to outside regulators, prosecutors, politicians, bankers and competitors. The result is an epic tale of how one private company, operating in deepest secrecy, consolidated wealth, power, and influence over half a century—and in doing so, helped transform capitalism into something that has come to feel deeply alienating to many Americans.

Kochland, The Secret History of Koch Industries reviewed

We may be living in a golden age of investigative journalism, though sadly this is also indicative of the challenging times that we live in, that we need the work of thorough, persistent journalists to keep digging to undercover the stories that vested, well resourced interests would prefer did not see the light of day. This long, well researched and readable book by Christopher Leonard is shortlisted for the 2019 The Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Of the five books we have reviewed to date on the shortlist, we’d say this one is probably in the top two.

Weighing in at almost six hundred pages, this is a long book and moves through a variety of industries, individuals, and decades too. However the complexity of the process, and the aim, by keeping the company private is very much intended to make it harder to follow the byzantine nature of Koch Industries and to maximise profits for David and Charles Kock and a very small limited number of share holders.

Time and time again they created firewalls to ensure that their risk was always limited when new companies were bought, and new industries entered into. This meant their potential losses were never that high, and, if it went well, they would double down on their investment and then enter even more deeply into that particular market.

Charles Koch was clearly in many ways a super intelligent and talented business person. The question is just whether he was inclined to apply this fantastic talent to good, helping the world, or rather, more specifically, Koch Industries. Leonard aims to be evenhanded, and while the early approach in the 1990s was to comply with environmental legislation to the bare minimum, as the decades went on, the goal was far wider and more systemic. Koch Industries, via a series of umbrella organisations to fund initiatives to support politicians running for office who support Koch’s goal of not advocating any taxes for carbon taxes.

Leonard carefully describes and outlines the systematic strategy by Koch Industries to coerce the American political system towards its own goals of a smaller government and smaller taxation impact for their own businesses. The final chapters describing the rise of Trump are also deeply disturbing as you try to work out who you can cheer for, in a country where various, different, vested interests are aiming to take apart the organisations and legislation that was created to aim to avoid climate change and all the disastrous implications that that implies.

On one side you have the considered, long term, and systematic approach of Koch Industries, and on the other you have the rolling, chaotic, unpredictable approach of Trump, who looks simply to reward those who have personally backed him and continue to do so.

Leonard’s book is not a short read, but it is an important one, and one well worth taking the time to read. In a time of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Trump, Brexit and so many more instances where vested interests are coopting democratic processes to serve their own interests. This detailed analyis and examination of the work, strategy and goals of Koch Industries is an important addition to the lifting of the lid on a whole can of worms that need to be addressed.

“This is a massive, and massively reported, book. But what’s most impressive is its refreshing balance and evenhandedness. Leonard does not judge the Kochs; he explains them …“ https://t.co/PQ2s8bu3IA

— Christopher Leonard (@CLeonardNews) August 15, 2019

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