The guy behind the curtain is the wizard indeed, but he doesn't seem to be a firebreathing monster.
Charles Koch, the leader of one of America's most profitable privately held businesses, has been excoriated from the floor of the Senate hundreds of times as a shadowy, greedy billionaire bent on buying elections.
Koch — who this year is expected to spend money on Senate races, but not the presidential contest — is not one to seek publicity and has never responded.
In his book, Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies, Koch makes it clear he despises crony capitalism. "Many people have tried to protect their businesses through political means but always to the detriment of society as a whole," he writes. He loathes corporate welfare. The only good profit, he says, is "creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity."
According to National Review, Koch believes Good Profit benefits everyone as long as business responds to the changing desires of the consumer. When personal computers replaced mainframe computers, that was bad for the mainframe market. But it was very good for people and society, he says.
Koch is famous for utterly ignoring pedigree in hiring. A degree from Harvard or Yale impresses him not a wit. Instead, he wants people who value hard work, integrity, fair play and entrepreneurship. He and his company have been known to hire people just because they were the right type of person, not because they had an actual job for them.
This is a book about business philosophy but also personal philosophy. It is revealing reading about one of the most talked about, but seldom heard from, men of the century.
Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies, Crown, 288 pages.
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