Prejšnji teden preminulemu Davidu Kochu, skupaj z bratom Charlesom co-menedžerju vsemogočnih Koch Industries, je v življenju uspelo precej velikih metov. Najbrž največja njegova uspeha pa sta, prvič, da je diagnoziran rak preživel za 27 let, in drugič, da mu je prek sponzoriranja konzervativnih think-tankov uspelo z ogromno dozo anarho kapitalizma okužiti vse pore družbenega življenja – od univerz do vladnih ekonomskih politik. Bolj kot bogastvo, ki ga je prek tako ciljanega vpliva lahko dosegel, in ki ga sicer ni mogel nesti s seboj na drugo stran, pa je problematična njegova zapuščina v obliki povečane koncentracije premoženja v ZDA v rokah peščice najbogatejših, povečane neenakosti in družbene razslojenosti ter vseobsegajoče metamorfoze ameriške družbe. Davidu Kochu je uspelo ubiti ameriške sanje in socialno mobilnost za stotine milijonov Američanov.

Ker pekla ni, bi bila zanj in njegovo družino edina pravična kazen morda popolni preokret ZDA v demokratični socializem, pardon socialno demokracijo.

Wikipedia o Davidu Kochu:

Koch was a libertarian. He was the 1980 Libertarian candidate for Vice President of the United States and helped finance the campaign. He founded Citizens for a Sound Economy.^[4] He donated to political advocacy groups^[2] and to political campaigns, almost entirely Republican.^[5] He moved to the Republican Party in 1984; in 2012 he spent over $100 million to oppose the re-election of President Barack Obama.^[6][7] Through Americans for Prosperity and other dark money vehicles, he was a leading source of funding for climate change denial and attacks on environmental regulation, unions, and workers’ rights.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]} Greenpeace estimates that the Koch brothers put $127 million into 92 groups involved in preventing action on climate change.^[14] His companies are among the biggest polluters in the United States.

In odlična osmrtnica v The Guardianu:

Anarcho-capitalism was the real cancer plaguing the billionaire libertarian. And it spread across universities, halls of Congress and the White House.

For all his adult life, he’d led Koch Industries, a diversified manufacturing conglomerate, with his older brother Charles. Now taking in around $110bn per year, the company creates chemicals and fertilizers; it produces synthetic materials such as Lycra; it sells lumber and churns out paper and glass products; it makes electronics components used in weapons systems. But first and foremost, Koch Industries mines and refines petroleum and operates pipelines to spread it throughout North America.

Koch Industries, a private company, is the United States’ 17th-largest producer of greenhouse gases and the 13th-biggest water polluter, according to research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst – ahead of oil giants Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum and Phillips 66. The conglomerate has committed hundreds of environmental, workplace safety, labor and other violations. It allegedly stole oil from Indian reservations, won business in foreign countries with bribery, and one of its crumbling butane pipelines killed two teenagers, resulting in a nearly $300m wrongful death settlement. The dangerous methane leakage, carbon emissions, chemical spills and other environmental injustices enacted by Koch’s companies have imperiled the planet and allegedly brought cancer to many people. But it took Koch’s own struggle with the disease for him to care about cancer and fund research to combat it.

This is the tragic mindset of many a rightwing oligarch: The toils, the woes, the maladies of humankind are irrelevant – unless they happen to me, or perhaps my close family members. I’ve never struggled to live on $7.25 per hour, so why is it a problem? An ailment has never caused me to go bankrupt, so why would anyone possibly need government subsidies to pay for life-saving medical care? Climate change has never directly affected my life so I’ll keep on denying that humans have anything to do with it. Even though I inherited a business and a fortune, I earned every cent of my astronomical net worth. If you worked as hard as I have, you would have what I have, too.

Koch epitomized this grotesquely selfish mentality during his 1980 vice presidential campaign on the Libertarian ticket, when he ran on abolishing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, welfare benefits, the minimum wage and the Environmental Protection Agency. He put $2m of his own money into the effort and campaigned to ax all campaign finance laws so he and his brother could maximize their bloated political influence without any pesky rules attempting to honor the constitutional premise of American elections: “One person, one vote.”

It is this cruel mindset that was the real cancer plaguing David Koch. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would spread itself into university curricula, the halls of Congress, regulatory agencies, and the White House. It possessed the unfathomably rich who came before him, and it will infect the opulent oligarchs who come after him. It is the cult of anarcho-capitalism, the faithful worship of the divine free market that has shined so brightly on Koch and his family. If only we could do away with government altogether, we’d become a true utopian society: a handful of corporate monarchs ruling over billions of wretched serfs who toil away until their deaths, faithfully adding zeros to the quarterly revenues of the select few at their own fatal expense.

Vir: Alex Kotch, The Guardian