Soros, Charles Koch fund non-interventionist think tank | Hacker News Reader

Soros, Charles Koch fund non-interventionist think tank

bostonglobe.com

92 pointsandybak74 comments

Underwhelming to say the least considering the financial power of the two funders. Washington is full of think tanks already churning out policy papers that end up as little more than a citation on a grad student's dissertation.

America's permanent war-time footing exists because of the lobbying practices of interest groups and horse-trading among members of the Congress and Senate. And, although it goes without saying, the knock-on effects of the US' previous military campaigns. As long as the influence and non-transparency of Super PACs is not addressed, nothing will change.

Nice to see that they've both thrown in $500k each. That's only 1/1000th of what Super PACs and dark money groups spent in the 2016 election [0]:

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/1-4-billion-and-cou...

“America's permanent war-time footing exists because of the lobbying practices of interest groups and horse-trading among members of the Congress and Senate”

Please elaborate. Genuinely interested on your take on this.

A plethora of problems plaguing democratic countries (not just the U.S.) stem from money having too much influence over politics, which was a problem for democracy even in ancient Greece.

You might happen to agree with Soros and Koch on this particular issue, but how about all the other times they've bought influence with money to serve their own interests? If rich people using their money to influence the government has been a problem in the past, perhaps it's not something we should be celebrating now even if this particular case seems less disgusting than is typical.

I will save my applause the oligarch who puts his fortune and power to the task of reducing his own influence over government and thereby strengthening democracy.

Wouldn't most low-profile billionaires do that by default, if they don't get involved in politics?

There was a time when American politicians derided the notion of having a permanent military. We're now at a 1986-esque point where we have to fight our politicians against the notion of being permanently at war.

At this point I’d be thrilled for any movement of policy in this direction, no matter who’s behind it.

What could Koch materially stand to gain from this?

It fits in with their beliefs into getting the US out of foreign entanglements.

> Its founding donors — Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation — have each contributed half a million dollars to fund its takeoff.

And if it works, its also pretty cost effective.

My guess is that you stand to make more money long term by trading with everybody. War profiteering is great money today, but I don’t think the Koch brothers take the stereotypical quarter-by-quarter approach to capitalism.

   but I don't think the Koch 
   brothers take the stereotypical
   quarter-by-quarter approach to 
   capitalism.

No, no they don't. Their focus is much more towards long-term growth and development (and long-term sustainability, which includes treating workers well and helping them succeed) than quarter-by-quarter results.

Exactly.

Whether you agree or disagree with their position, they're not Wall Street style, short-term optimizers.

They've put massive efforts into destroying unions. They've funded mike rowe, who goes on tirades against osha. They don't care about workers at all.

Then there's the consequences of these efforts such as https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/17/koch-complianc...

   They don't care about workers at all

(Full disclosure: I know several people who work at different Koch companies)

From what I've heard and experienced, there is a very different culture between the founded-by-the-Koch-brothers companies and the bought-by-the-Koch-brothers companies, mostly due to the fact that the upper levels of management were retained and kept their old ways- there is a huge difference in mentality between the old managers and bosses and the Koch ones.

When it comes to injuries, Georgia Pacific was quite the beleaguered company before the Kochs bought it, too. [1]

  They've funded mike rowe [sic] who goes on tirades against osha [sic]

To be honest, I haven't really heard about Mike Rowe, so I looked him up. A Forbes article from three days ago [2] talks about Mike Rowe and how he's working to change the perception that skilled labor is bad. In my opinion, this is good! Not everyone wants to go to college- it's not necessary to make a living (though it will likely be more physically demanding). Do I think that OSHA is a good idea? Yes. Is Mike Rowe also doing a huge favor to the morale of those who don't want to go to college? Yes. Do I agree with everything Mike Rowe has ever said? Probably not.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2003/03/10/story...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyberk/2019/06/28/mike-rowe-...

What Mike Rowe is doing is quite subtle https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/mike-rowes-dirty-job/

The idea that Koch is investing all his money in politics for the sake of making more money is a silly affectation. He's poured way more into the conservative/libertarian movement than he ever expects to get back.

He genuinely believes in his principles. Obviously they align with self interest in lots of ways, but he'd be materially better off if he took a much less active role in shaping conservative ideology.

An end to a policy of sanctions?

Wars and sanctions are a drag on the economy. If you could get rid of them everyone including Koch could be better off.

No intervention = stability

It also largely reduces risk in some foreign investments

So now we can finally see some real power struggles at hand: The military-industrial-banking complex against a few powerful industry figures. My tip goes to the former.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190630200023/https://www.bosto...

My understanding (which is different from most worldviews) is that the long-term military campaigns are actually a structural component of the geopolitical order and not just "policing" or "profiteering" as they are often portrayed.

Actually I see it as not only a multidecade effort but spanning all the way back to the parent hegemony of Britain and continuing the tradition of empire that goes back thousands of years.

I'm all for a new paradigm but I think you would actually be making a break with history in general.

And then the practical side of this. The dominance of American currency and relative wealth of America has not so far been made possible by some superior ideology as it is often believed but rather by regular deployment of the most high-tech, massive and deadly weaponry ever created.

You would need to get everyone to agree to the new paradigm of peace. Do we expect China to stop building out it's navy, cyberwar, AI defense, etc.? Or just maybe everyone agrees to not use their weapons? Because if not then what you are actually talking about is not a new paradigm but rather letting a new hegemony take over.

It’s only surprising if you adhere to the cartoonish villain theory of the Koch brothers. They are more intellectually consistent than given credit for and have funded advocacy for criminal justice reform, i.e. abolishing unnecessary incarceration, not exactly a hallmark right-wing policy.

Well, since the Koch brothers are Libertarians who don't want the US in any foreign entanglements and Soros doesn't like any of the modern wars, I don't see what is so surprising. Billionaire activists like to set these things up. I dearly wish we get back to something reasonable in headlines.

I know the Kochs contribute to Cato, but it's a stretch to call them "libertarian" these days. I think they're opportunistic oligarchs. They meddle with their money. I wish they wouldn't.

Running things in a democratic fashion would require the rich to have far less influence than they currently do. Buying elections and policies is not democratic.

I have never understood US interventionism. It seems to have more to do with corporations making money than it does anything else. It's corporo-colonialism. Ugly, ugly business where intelligence agencies go in and destabilize countries in order to pave the way for higher levels of intervention and then the soft, undeclared wars start with Hellfire missiles killing off the opposition, and other targeted types of killings.

Libertarians support individual liberty and constrained government; they don't necessarily support democracy (though this does not necessarily imply supporting dictatorship).

https://reason.com/2018/11/10/libertarian-critiques-of-democ...

From some libertarians perspective; it's more important to constrain the power of government than to do so in a democratic fashion. The proposed ways of enforcing constrained government vary considerably though.

EDIT: Apparently defining terms and explaining view points does not meet the high standards of hacker news comments. If I have misrepresented any perspectives my apologies.

Democracy in the absence of individual liberty and constrained government simply doesn't work - it becomes corruption. While admittedly, few non-democratic polities pursue liberal values, the ones that occasionally did throughout history seemed to feature a similar quality of governance to modern liberal democracies. Their main (and quite significant) problem was instability over time, and that's what democratization mostly addresses.

The rich have yet more influence than their 1-pct selves: they also direct all of their corporations which lobby heavily as well, as a force multiplier.

So an individual citizen's vote has very little influence compared to those gargantuan forces.

They meddle with their money.

Yes, they do, and that doesn't disqualify them as Libertarian. I assume by using "libertarian" in quotes and lower case, you have some meaning beyond the actual Libertarian Party. They fund the Libertarian magazine Reason. Spending money to influence people is not a conflict.

Reminds me of recent headlines that described agreements between AOC and Ted Cruz.

Truly, if you go far enough right you end up on the left, and vice-versa.

This is a good thing.

Uh... no you don't... this isn't pacman where you come out on the other side. Many conservatives actually agreed w/ AOC on a move to limit how much credit cards and predatory loans could charge in interest... It's something that helps and benefits most of society except the predatory lending companies, and it's something not as polarized. It's easy for cross-collaborating because there's no clause on abortion, guns, no religious intertwinings...

You're not gonna find many people right of libertarians calling for universal healthcare because they're magically progressive now...

You're also not going to find progressives out in the leftest of the left who are also members of the KKK or think there are 'good people on both sides'... there will always be some overlap on smaller issues that aren't ideological. Ending war seems like something both sides could get behind (only reason they haven't is because of the amount of $$$ in warfare -- it's insane).

I also think it's just posturing. 500k is a tiny tiny sum compared w/ what Soros and Koch spend in politics annually. They'd put up way more if they thought it was gonna go anywhere, or valuable enough to do so. Personally I don't trust either as they're both oligarch's just w/ slightly different ideologies of the perfect society (that they are trying to bring about by virtual of their extreme wealth).

The KKK is pretty much dead today, isn't it? Democratic Senator Byrd was their last high profile leader, except for maybe David Duke and he's been marginalized for decades.

Antifa seems like the group most likely to wear masks and attack people. (I see people are defending some person who spit on Eric Trump last weekend.) Antifa beat a journalist, and again they have defenders.

So..... yes. If you go to where the hate is, left and right will be close together there.

On the other side of the coin, I have many good friends on the left and the right. They are all good people. I'd imagine about half a circle away from those violent types of either political philosophy.

I laughed at their street cred.

When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers. It's good in some sense that two oligarchs who fund various political organizations agree on something but I'd rather have actual democracy in the US.

All things in balance.

The problem with strict democracy is that everyone ultimately votes to give themselves a raise.

Truly competing oligarchs (ironic, given article) are certainly more democratic than Russian-style oligarchy.

Edit: To the knee-jerk, I ask what the alternative is? Create a government-adjudicated omni-system to prevent democratic meddling, without loophole and completely impartial?

I personally think Citizens United should be repealed and caps put in place, but let's not kid ourselves that would solve the problem.

> The problem with strict democracy is that everyone ultimately votes to give themselves a raise.

The homeless deserve a raise (aka being housed). It's not a problem when a system fights to help the average man and those that are worse off. It's a problem when the system is only helping those that are already rich.

The strange thing is that the rich profit if the poor get more money to spend. But that's indirect and long term, and that is a difficult concept for many.

Tax cuts and entitlement boosts are both raises, couched in the respective vocabulary of the two parties.

One makes few friends (and attracts few votes) by pointing out that we cannot afford something.

Trump has already ended that policy.

Yes but when the next President comes in we will want to have had Trump's anti-war policies to have been cemented in place.

Which policies are you referring to?

Although the Trump administration has voiced a desire to extract themselves from the existing military engagements in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, they have not yet done so. (As a side note, the previous administration also expressed a similar desire). Thus it is perhaps premature to claim that the current administration has 'ended' the policy.

However, this misses the point that the goal of the proposed institute is to:

> ... promote an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing.

Unfortunately, the current negotiation tactics being pursued against, say, Iran, do not fall under this new style of diplomacy. I'm sure other examples may come to mind.

It's weird to take tools off the table, like sanctions. It would reduce diplomacy to begging "pretty please".

I'll be interested in seeing what the proposed alternative will be.

"Pretty please" is actually a good default approach for a state X wanting something from another state Y; it shows respect and builds mutual trust. There is no guarantee that request will be fulfilled, but it can start a dialog "we want something in return" that can result in mutual accommodation. When the state X throws out past agreements, starts making higher demands, it is playing very risky game.

That's a generous interpretation. A more realistic one is that Soros's and Koch brothers Chinese holdings are beginning to suffer a little.

If he did...

he forgot to tell a lot of my buddies about it. Because they're still stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Would love to see evidence to support what you are saying. Trump did pull out of Syria, at Russia's request, but has increased threats towards Iran and Venuzuela, not to mention unbridled support for SA war in Yemen (including attmepting to bypass Congress to sell them more weapons -- which is contrary to what you are asserting).

Trump has not started any foreign intervention, unlike the past two administrations. Threats of foreign intervention are great and we should keep doing that. Imagine if GW Bush had just made threats. Man, I wish he threatened every country in the world, if that kept him from -- you know -- actually invading Iraq.

Moreover, he _defeated ISIS_, and _stopped nuclear testing in North Korea_. If any of the previous administrations achieved just one of these things, you'd never hear the end of it, and they'd receive a Nobel Peace Prize every year. With Trump, if you go to CNN right now, you can't even find anything about his _stepping over the DMZ into NK_ yesterday. He's the first US president to do so. It's a historic event, no matter how much they hate Trump. Go ahead and check.

>he _defeated ISIS_

He didn't, the Syrian Arab Army and Russia did (and the Syrian Defense Forces, to an extent).

In words (sometimes) but not deeds.

That's really a continuation of the policies of the prior two presidents (maybe more, I just don't remember one way or the other).

> They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government.

As we all know, the best way to start a piece of political journalism is to instill and propagate hyperbolic and oversimplified views.

The only part of that statement that is hyperbolic is that they literally breathe fire

Except they give Soros the old-fashioned (harmless New Dealer type) moniker and they conjure dragon imagery for the right winger. Why is it so hard for journalists to write neutrally these days?

Everyone is biased, including journalists and you.

Indeed, everyone is biased and so am I. But the job of journalism is to at least make an attempt at stripping away that personal bias. That takes a self-awareness, respect for the other side and humbleness that modern journalists seem to lack.

I'd rather plain bias than false equivalency.

False dichotomy. We can take practical steps to reduce bias, even it we can't eliminate bias altogether.

I'm not looking for false equivalency. I'm looking for accurate journalism.

I doubt either of these parties would find these descriptions agreeable, not because they have negative connotations, but because they fail to encapsulate what these men stand for and what their body of work suggests.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Your assessment is a popular false narrative that was invented recently by the "alt right", by professional disinformers (paid think tanks, troll farms, etc.) and by clickbait producers. I'm not claiming that you belong to any of those groups, just that these groups have influenced many people to parrot this false narrative. Unfortunately, people are easy to influence and repeat such kind of phrases.

Two other points:

1. People are even more biased than you think, including you. It's impossible to have no bias, journalists have always been biased. Nothing has changed in that respect. If at all, journalists were way more politically biased in the 1970s than they are now.

2. Another thing has changed. There are now more people who think of themselves as journalists - all those bloggers and vloggers - without having learned the handcraft, and there are more parties interested in discrediting actual journalists than there used to be.

3. Unfortunately, people have started to loose understanding the distinction between editorials and news. That's the real reason why this false narrative is so successful. Even though all major newspapers clearly mark their editorials and opinion pieces, people ignore this and complain about "biases". I've seen this over and over again. At the same time, they are unable to state the main traits of news and the differences between news and opinion. To me, that's more a sign of increased illiteracy due to more visual media consumption than having anything to do with the quality of journalism.

4. Last but not least, basically everyone I've ever heard complaining about modern journalism think they know better what's going on in the world. How would that be possible? There is no way for them to know. And basically everybody who complains takes US TV network news as a kind of "lost gold standard" of journalism, which is plain ridiculous. The complaints are insubstantial, by people who do not consume the actual products like daily news or weekly newspapers any longer.

In a nutshell, more people complain about weaker standards in journalism, because they know less about journalism.

I'm well aware of my personal biases. But the only way that I was even able to get to that level of self-awareness was by engaging with people who think differently than me.

Today's polarization is very real. Its tangible. It's being exacerbated by the CNN vs Fox dynamic of left vs right leaning news. It's being aggravated by social media and mass media bubbles. And it's very destructive.

https://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-pol...

I totally agree with you but also confirm my point. You're talking about CNN and Fox as if they were typical news providers. Fox News never was a real news channel, and CNN only for a brief period of time during Golf War 1 and briefly thereafter. Both of them have never been great for getting news. These US TV channels are media entertainment companies.

These are the top rated cable news channels: Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. I agree they're not good for news, but this is what people tune into.

Sure, but that's irrelevant goalpost-shifting. The original claim was that there has been a decline in journalistic integrity. Neither news agencies nor any reputable journals are working in any other way than they used to - I see no noticeable decline in any of the good newspapers or in the work of major news agencies. On the contrary, access to good journalism has never been as easy as today. You can sit at home and watch a journalist risk his life to get you first-hand in-depth reports from Taliban in Afghanistan or from Mexican drug gangs. These kind of documentaries didn't even exist twenty years ago, yet people complain about a "decline of journalism" because "they heard it on Internet"...

The vast majority of journalists are unionized and therefore benefit from the popularity of anti free market ideology.

Soros basically advocates western liberalism, ie spreading the western status quo. The Koch’s really are much more out there.

The Open Society does give money to moderate and center-left groups but it has also regularly given grants to far-left redistributionist activist groups, Anti-Israel organizations, and Marxist protestors. Not quite the western status quo.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/open-society-found...

Which explains my anger over this seemingly insignificant detail.

The fact is, our entire perception of people we have never met is shaped by propaganda. We cannot even have meaningful conversations about the actions of these people if we have to spend the most useful and engaging part of the time someone will give attention to a conversation just explaining the rules.

The Kochs do not wish to "dismantle government". What does that even mean? As an anarchist I can tell you that they do not fall in my camp and frequently use large governing bodies to their advantage.

What about "old-fashioned New Deal liberal" and "fire-breathing right-wingers" could possibly be more oversimplified?

Not only are we comparing apples to oranges (liberal to right-wing; "liberal" and "left" are independent tokens) but we are calling Kochs fierce right-wingers despite many of their beliefs and actions standing in stark contrast against right-wing politics. Both parties have good and bad characteristics, both have characteristics that do not square snuggly into either of the round holes presented.

That is deceitful, lazy journalism. The journalist wanted to set up a dramatic angle which showed two "completely incompatible" people coming into agreement about something which their presented oversimplified world views should not allow.

By choosing drama and oversimplification in lieu of accurate reporting, the journalist demonstrates that they are not qualified to have the kind of mature political dialogue one would assume The Boston Globe would like to display.

In fairness, both George Soros and Charles Koch have been relatively pacifist for a while now. That shouldn't be surprising: while one is a little more pro-redistribution, they're both fundamentally capitalists, and war is bad for business. (The major problem with Koch is his support of climate denialists.)

Yeah, right. We're that stupid to believe you!

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