Are the Kochs also philanthropists? I mean beyond their political contributions. Genuine question
David lives back in NY and I don't know a lot about him. Charles and Liz are indeed. They seek, for the most part, to stay out of the limelight and keep much of it quiet. You'll find the Koch name on a few things they donated for (like WSU's Koch Arena), but generally avoid that.
They are multi, multi billionaires living quietly in the same town forever. They haven't built a "shrine for themselves" house and "estate". They largely stay completely out of the news.
It really is an interesting story, the rise of the company in just a few decades into such a massive company, with many tens of billion dollars per year in revs. It may be a hundred billion or more now, I haven't been paying a lot of attention lately. Not to mention it is a private company. Possibly the largest, definitely the second largest.
How often do you see a private company (other than a Goldman Sachs type thing) buy a huge outfit like Georgia Pacific? It's almost mind boggling. Especially considering where they came from just forty years ago.
I am not advocating for them. And I never worked for them. Could have, but declined. I doubt the culture was right for me. I'm too much of a non conformist. But I have very close friends and many acquaintances that have worked for them for decades. They are all decent people. Certainly more productive, contributive members of society than the average Joe. (Oops, I shouldn't have said that!)
For all its warts, and there no doubt are plenty, the outfit does a lot more good than some hedge fund manager in NY extracting a billion a year from the financial markets.
Oh well, back to sleep.
D&O
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