Thank Charles Koch for Artistic Expression: Defending the “rich” from the 99%
I do happen to know of some organizations in the liberty movement that��are funded by the Koch Brothers. I don���t blame those organizations one bit. As I write this Greece has just swept control of their government by extreme leftist socialists so there is a lot of current against logic that funding from conservatives like the Koch Brothers provides to keep those organizations in the fight. There are a lot of left-leaning organizations who fund the efforts of collectivism and what Charles and his brother Dave are doing is just a drop in the bucket compared to the efforts of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the labor unions who advance like a disease political collectivism at a maddening pace. But Overmanwarrior���s Wisdom is not one of those organizations backed by the Koch Brothers. As a matter of fact in 2012 I cut all ties to such relationships after my group No Lakota Levy was applying pressure to not fight the good fight as aggressively as I wanted. At the time there were a lot of wealthy people affiliated with me. At no time did we exchange any money or did they do me any favors���and I made sure to keep it that way because when the time came to cut those ties, I could without stopping the fight at hand. So I have a very rigid policy on those kinds of matters. If Charles Koch offered me millions of dollars to do what I���m doing right now with Overmanwarrior���s Wisdom I wouldn���t take a dime of his money, because it might limit my freedom of movement on the battlefield according to my assessment of what needs to be done. So my work and his are vastly independent from each other���yet it isn���t.
I admire Charles Koch as an industrialist. Every day I drive by one of the Koch plants in my neighborhood and I wonder often what American manufacturing would be like if not for the Koch Brothers. They all by themselves are responsible for a vast amount of the wealth created in America and my only regret is that there aren���t twenty or thirty more people just like them. Often what happens to billionaires like Ross Perot, and Bill Gates over time is they go soft as the guilt of their holdings wears on their minds as their testicular fortitude fades a bit with age. For Charles Koch to say what he did at a conference on Saturday January 24, 2015 was quite extraordinary. People in his position don���t often defend themselves or their wealth as a creation of their own making the way he does which is worthy of a highlight. He stated to a packed room in public which ended up in USA Today:
���Americans have taken an important step in slowing down the march toward collectivism, Koch said. ���But as many of you know, we don���t rest on our laurels. We are already back at work and hard at it.���
Koch said his vision is of a ���society that maximizes peace, civility and well-being;��� encourages hard work and ensures free speech and ���free markets.���
Bravo���������������..I couldn���t have said it better myself.
I currently know a number of people who are considered ���wealthy.��� Most of the people I think of as friends are certainly in the upper portion of the 1% category. And the thing that drives me nuts about most of them is their susceptibility to the guilt that society applies on them to ���share the wealth��� they have made for mass consumption. They are obviously smart people because that���s how they obtained wealth in the first place. The people I know did not acquire their wealth the way typical Santa Monica or New York day traders do���like gamblers betting on value and happenstance. They earned their money through a creation process of a new sustainable business and investments in tangible assets. The result is that most of the people I most closely associate with are people of means. I am in a unique position to voice my thoughts about the guilt process that is applied to these types of people because honestly, my passions reside in artistic endeavors. So I don���t put myself in a position to have my tangible assets plucked apart by a flock of social looters���and could care less if I piss off those who believe in wealth redistribution. Much of what I do and say against left-leaning wealth redistribution through collectivism schemes is based on this inside knowledge. I have been on both sides of the fence and I understand extremely well the personalities involved. There is a reason I know mostly wealthy people as friends as opposed to those who believe in wealth redistribution. My values are more aligned with them than the social looter��who believes that wealth is a finite resource that is plucked out of the air for equal distribution���and the wealthy are those who have hoarded that value selfishly.
So it does my heart a lot of good when I see those wealthy people fighting back the way I always thought they should. They give power to the social looters when they yield to the voices of radicalism���as I witnessed many times during my No Lakota Levy campaigns where protesting PTA parents threatened boycotts against businesses because they supported lower taxes. It was appalling the types of things that came out of the mouths of the typical levy supporter. But the indiscretions didn���t stop there���I saw the same radicalism from police and fire departments towards friends of mine just over the allocation of tax payer resources. I have heard much about the plush life of the 1% who fights against higher taxes because the belief of the other 99% believes that by taxing the rich that somehow the world will be a better place. The belief of such advocates is raw unfiltered communism disguised by a different name of progressivism. Yet if you took the 99% and gave them all the wealth of the 1% they would squander it away in a few short years because they do not have the same abilities to maintain that wealth.
Wealth in America is created. It is an artistic expression of formulating an idea from inception to profitable construction which directly creates jobs. It is an amazing thing to do���creating wealth���and those who can do it deserve to be honored, not chastised because they have a skill that others don���t have. Hating the wealthy is as ridiculous as hating another person because they are more attractive, or can throw a football further than the average person. The hate of the 99% against the 1% is jealousy and nothing else and the collectivism spawned from that activity is sheer evil.���� When the wealthy stop producing everyone suffers���mostly the 99%. When the wealthy are given a free canvas to paint upon, they create wonderful things. Tax incentives to a business are like paint to an artist. It gives the fledging entrepreneur more paint to work with���and the opportunity to create better masterpieces.
So to hear Charles Koch defend the right of the creative 1% to stand against the collectivist brutality of the 99% is 100% correct. Good for him. Instead of feeling guilty for his wealth the way Bill Gates does, and philanthropists like George Soros who is one of those scheming day traders���Koch is fighting to defend the system that he uses to create wealth, jobs, and products that make the world better off���and its about time.
Over the weekend I went to Wal-Mart with my wife, which is a rarity for me, because I don���t care much for crowds and chaos. A trip to Wal-Mart usually encompasses both. While there I couldn���t help but think of the recent attempts to unionize the popular retailer and consider the vast wealth of the Walton family. The Walton family is among the richest families in the world. Their wealth inherited from Bud and Sam Walton, founders of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart is extraordinary.[1] The three most prominent living members (Jim, Rob and Alice) have consistently been in the top ten of the Forbes 400 since 2001, as were John (d. 2005) and Helen (d. 2007) prior to their deaths. Christy Walton took her husband John’s place after his death.
Collectively, the Waltons own over 50% of the company, and are worth a combined total of $175 billion (as of January 2015).[2] In 2010, six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as either the bottom 28% or 41% of American families combined (depending on how it is counted).[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family
That vast wealth created by the Walton family is providing low-cost goods to a huge demographic population in America and providing jobs to China that would not exist otherwise. They created wealth and on a typical Saturday afternoon the reason is on full display. Without the Walton family endeavors Wal-Mart would not exist and the people shopping there would be forced to pay 20% to 30% more for average items. Wal-Mart because of its vast purchasing power forces retailers to lower their prices which of course drive the entire market value down���a gift to the so-called ���middle-class��� and poor. Without that power, everything would be much more expensive and it would be unlikely that average homes could even hope to afford a flat screen 47��� television. But these days, it would be difficult to find the home of a technically poor person that doesn���t have at least one such television. Thank the Walton family for enriching American society to such a vast extent, and they are not obligated in any way to ���share��� that wealth with any wealth redistribution scheme���because typical people will blow through the money like water over Niagara Falls. All the wealth in the world would be gone within a few years if given to the collectivism of the masses.
It���s about time that the wealthy start defending themselves and not feeling guilty about a $500 meal out at night with friends, or a round of golf at a posh country club. They should not feel bad because of a nice new car that is valued at $100,000 after installed options. Because they earned it in the same way that artists earned critical praise for a fine work painted upon a canvas. Building wealth is an art form and the wealthy are artists who build things that didn���t exist before their influence. I am happy to hear Charles Koch defending that value in public on a large stage knowing that the parasites have targeted him and his brother for years. He knows there will be back-lash over his comments, yet he made them anyway���and good for him. After all, only a handful of people in the world are capable of doing what Charles Koch does for a living. And he deserves to be paid for that productivity accordingly without an ounce of guilt.
Rich Hoffman
Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development
