Welcome to Rancho Mirage: Why, when we need John Galt, do we end up with the rent-seeking Koch brothers, who are ‘now at the heart of GOP power’?
I can understand the desire to protect one’s business from new government carbon mandates and from noxious new regulations over all derivatives hedging purposes (seriously I can understand it, even as many on the left now harbor deep suspicions of business), but doesn’t buying control over government through the GOP kind of cut against the libertarian, free-markets message?
Koch Brothers Roundup (major news reporting on Rancho Mirage gathering)
Why can’t our supposedly adamantly libertarian billionaire Koch brothers put their money where their ideals are, say by establishing partnerships and other organizations that DON’T require government-granted legal entity/ limited liability privileges? (Simply creating obstensibly libertarian pressure groups like Cato that refuse to criticise corporate statism doesn’t count.)
Where are our leading libertarians who are forming:
- The Buck Stops Here Clubs, or Businesses for Partnerships and Personal Liability and Responsibility?
- Businesses, Shareholders, Investors and Executives Who Don’t Buy Votes, Politicians or Judges Clubs?
- Businesses that Don’t Do Business with Government Clubs?
It’s not as if government:
- MAKES investors choose limited liability corporations that mask responsibility,
- makes corporations fight for government favor, including to pretend that corporate legal entity fictions need disembodied ‘voices’, even though their shareholders, managers and employees all have their own, or
- makes prominent ‘libertarians’ do shallow, one-sided work for fairly naked corporate rent-seeking ‘Astroturf’ outfits.
(I feel increasingly grateful for the individuals who so generously devote their time and resources to LvMI! Jeffrey Tucker, are we trumpeting our own funders loudly enough? They deserve our thanks AND patronage!)
The Middle East gets its popular revolts, but we just have more elites stirring up and hiding behind decidedly paｒtisan animosity (hello, George Soros!). Alas, our tribal nature makes it difficult for us to perceive our real enemies, and inclines us to internecine warfare over the wheel of government to the hard work of building community.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, the LA Times February 6 article Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power is worth a gander and some pondering — and just a start at looking at billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. Useful charts on vote-buying by the Kochs are here and here. I’m not an opponent of any industry, per se, or of the Tea Party movement, but there’s far too much uncomfortable truth to the Left’s criticisms of the Kochs. Why can’t they publicly criticize government and corporate rent-seeking, or work publicly to build community? The secrecy itself is poisoning the cause they profess to believe in (see more links below).
See Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece, Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
Uncloaking the Koch Brothers Trillion & Billionaire Oil Regime
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