 Over the past 50 plus years, Charles Koch grew his family business, Koch Industries, into one of the largest privately held companies in America while playing a leading role in creating or supporting the modern libertarian movement and some of its major institutions. Among them, the Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, Mercatus Center, and the Charles Koch Foundation, a non-profit that supports many organizations, including Reason Foundation, the publisher of Reason Magazine. Along with his brother David, who passed away last year at the age of 79, the 85 year old billionaire became not only one of the most successful businessmen in the country, but among the most controversial, with leftists blaming the Koch brothers for many of our contemporary problems. Koch has just published Believe in People, a book that seeks to offer a paradigm shift that calls for all of us to move away from the top down approach to solving the really big problems by instead empowering people from the bottom up to act on their unique gifts and contribute to the lives of others. In a conversation with Koch and his co-author Brian Hooks, who is chairman and CEO of Stand Together and the president of the Charles Koch Foundation, I discussed the 2020 election, the successes and failures of the Libertarian movement, and what they see as the defining challenges and opportunities in the coming decade. Charles Koch, Brian Hooks, thanks for talking to reason. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Nick. Good to see you again. It's been a few years. It has indeed. So, as a starting point, Charles, could you kind of give what's the controlling idea of Believe in People? It's the idea that transformed my life and that of so many others and enabled me to accomplish more than I ever dreamed. And so my goal with the book is to use it to help many more people benefit from these ideas. And these are the principles of human progress, which in large part have to do with bottom up empowering of people. And when that happens and people are empowered, many of them become social entrepreneurs. And when there are enough of these social entrepreneurs as we've seen throughout history, they transform society and move it. It's never been perfect and never will be perfect, because human beings aren't perfect. Directionally toward a society more of equal rights and mutual benefit where people succeed by assisting one another and everyone has the opportunity to realize their potential. So that's what this book is about. And it tells the story, my story, which is probably the least interesting, but the story of people through history who have changed society, transformed themselves, transformed society by being social entrepreneurs, and then talks about the work we're doing today and all the thousands of social entrepreneurs we're helping to empower others to change their lives and help everybody rise. Right. And a lot of these issues have to do with things like education, substance abuse, housing, whatever. Brian, who's an exemplary social entrepreneur? And can you explain in the book and can you explain how that fits together with the larger groups stand together? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as as Charles said, we tell a lot of different stories about people and social entrepreneurs that we think exemplify this model of bottom-up solutions. You know, the three big ideas in the book that while there's going to be a ton of different solutions to all of the different challenges that come at our country, what they all have in common is this core belief in people, that it makes more sense to empower people from the bottom up, invest in those that are closest to the problems as the source of the solutions, and then unite with anybody to do right. You look at an organization that we feature in the preface and a group that we've worked with that stand together for, I guess, the better part of four years now, a group called the Family Independence Initiative. I think they exemplify each one of those big ideas. Family Independence Initiative was founded by a guy named Mauricio Miller, run by a guy named Jesus Horena. The thing that both Jesus and Mauricio have in common is that they experienced poverty firsthand growing up, and so they've got the kind of personal knowledge that tends to be key to unlocking really effective solutions to problems, whatever we're talking about. Charles would say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The results that the Family Independence Initiatives gets in terms of empowering families who are in poverty to emerge from poverty, to rise out of poverty, are off the charts, especially when you compare them to some of the top-down alternatives that permeate society. So what do they, can you explain a little bit of what they actually do? Yeah, I mean, it's a great model. So, you know, whereas the top-down approach looks at people in poverty as a problem to be solved, and it brings people from the outside in to try to kind of tell them what to do, Family Independence Initiative takes the opposite approach. They bring families who are in similar situations in poverty together under the idea that the solution to those families' poverty exists within the families, but just like all of us, they need some help in order to really emerge. They need capital, social capital, and financial capital, and through some pretty simple tools. The Family Independence Initiative helps those families to express their goals, and then to work together to help each other achieve those goals in this very topovillian notion of mutual assistance. But 27% of the families that participate in these programs after two years rise out of poverty and stay out of poverty, which is extraordinary, again, relative to the alternative. They double their savings. And again, this is sort of based on this deep belief in people, right? We believe in those families, and then we recognize that, you know, that many of us, including Jesus and Mauricio and the team there, they've got some skills and some things that can help those families to achieve more than they otherwise could. And the starting point to, as we've found, to learn the hard way is to believe in people is to recognize that everyone has a gift, that everyone has something to offer. And we learn that from multiple intelligence theory, from Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, the division of labor by comparative advantage, which is what raised humanity out of eternal dire poverty, that people started to be empowered to try things, to do things, and focus on what they were good at, recognize what they were good at and what they were not in focus, and then exchange with others. And then this brought about this whole change in the culture from everybody in conflict with each other to cooperating, to supporting each other, to assisting each other by trading, each concentrating on what they do best and exchanging. And this also happens to follow the second law of thermodynamics, which you know very well is that... I live the second law of thermodynamics. I've been tending towards entropy since I was born. Yeah, that's it. That use, entropy, uselessness, and waste increases in a closed system. So we all need to be open. And what does that mean? It means open to different ideas, different people, different things, different approaches, and so try to find common ground with others. Charles, one of the things that I think people reading the book will be interested to understand is kind of the two of the major figures who's thought you're following. There's Friedrich Hayek on the one hand. That's not going to be surprising to anybody who knows free market economics and whatnot, but also Abraham Maslow. Can you talk about how these two guys kind of fit together for you and how that energizes a lot of what you're talking? When I think of them in harmony, I think of Hayek's statement of what probably the greatest discovery in the history of mankind was, and that is that people can live together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common aims by only being bound by abstract rules of conduct. Now what does that say? That says bottom up is what works. And that's what Maslow said. He said, what you can be, you must be. If you don't develop your capabilities and realize your potential, you may be successful externally, but you will be deeply unhappy because you're not fulfilling your gifts, your nature. And so the way that's done is bottom up. Each person discovering their gift, turning it into valued skills, and then using it to succeed by contributing. So they're both coming from it. And this is what I find, and with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they all fit. And this is what, when I started studying this, I became fascinated and transformed my life studying these principles of human progress. The ones I really gravitated, it was from all the different disciplines and perspectives, they came together. They reinforced each other. And those are the ones that worked in history, that lifted societies up and headed them toward the ability to enable more people to realize their potential and contribute and work in harmony and peace. So Nick, the real opportunity that we see and stand together is how do you translate those big insights into actual action that can empower people to overcome the challenges? So we talked about the Family Independence Initiative as an example of a program that does that. But no program can do it all on its own. There's no single solution to the big problems that we're trying to solve. And so what we put forward in the book is that what's necessary is this comprehensive approach. So you take what Charles just said seriously, how do we really help to put society in a position where they're empowering people to discover their own paths in a way that satisfies themselves, finds fulfillment by helping others. And so programs like Family Independence Initiative are important because communities play a critical role in empowering people. But we know public policy does as well. And so you've got to identify those barriers and policies that are perpetuating poverty, things like occupational licensure, that sort of thing. But for a long time, we've kind of left a lot of the other opportunities in society off the table. Do you think is that coming out of a kind of rigid libertarian idea that the government shouldn't be involved in it, so we're not really going to talk about it? No, the government has a role. But I mean, government is one of what we look at is four types of institutions. One are community institutions, educational institutions, business institutions, and government institutions. And what our goal is is to help each one move toward doing the things that empower people to improve their lives and the lives of others and move toward this society of equal rights and mutual benefit. So the policies, so we work with thousands of social entrepreneurs across all four of these sets of institutions. And what we do is support those who are going in that direction. And we don't ask for perfection if we find they agree with us on one. They may disagree with us on all the others, but we will work with them on that one. And that's the only way we found we can move society forward in that And at various points in the book, Frederick Douglass, the 19th century abolitionist order comes up a lot, particularly in this concept of uniting with anybody to do good. Brian, Frederick Douglass, social entrepreneur, I mean, it's kind of one way of talking about him. But how does he inhabit or personify? Well, I mean, may I take that? Because I'm the, as you say, as you saw in the book, I have my two, I list three categories of people that have influenced me and that my two heroes are Frederick Douglass and Victor Frankel. And Frederick Douglass particularly because of what he overcame to be empowered, what he did with it to not be vengeful or hateful, but to help everybody, to eliminate all kinds of injustices. And then he wrote about the aha moments, the very things we've been talking about. For example, he found or he realized that he wasn't enslaved because he was inferior, but because he was being kept ignorant. So he taught himself to read when he was eight. Then at age 16, he had the opportunity to teach Sunday school. So he taught them to read. And it wears what his comment was. At last, I found a way to contribute. So he was contribution motivated, even as enslaved. And then he escaped. And he got a job and he says, I'm not only a free man, I'm a free working man. And then he went to these abolitionist rallies and finally, they called on him, but won all the top abolitionists were speaking garrison and the rest. And he was the best. So he found his gift. And he dedicated his life to that and became very successful. And then a powerful, one of the top social entrepreneurs in our history. And Brian, I will point out that it was the Irish who beat up Frederick Douglass when he was free in the North. I'll take that as a personal dig based on our history together, Nick. Our common, yes. I think it's important, though, to note, I mean, we learn so much from guys like Douglass and other of these just unbelievable social entrepreneurs who overcame unimaginable barriers. But I think we make a mistake if we say, well, they can do it. And therefore, I can't or other people can't. So what we try to do in the book is also share stories of modern day people who exemplify the same sort of path that Douglass, recognizing that nobody today struggles with what he had to. Right. Who's a good short example of that? We look at a guy like Anton Lucky, for instance, right? Who's just this phenomenal guy we met four or five years ago, part of a group called Urban Specialists. Anton, early on about 14 years old, started the most violent gang in Dallas, the Bloods, went on to, you know, as one does, after you start a gang when you're 14, spend time in prison. But Anton in prison begins this personal transformation, which follows remarkably the path that Charles just described for Douglass. Right. And long story short, he comes out of prison having discovered his leadership gifts and is now applying them to help other kids go down a better path than he did. And you say, well, geez, that's great. Maybe Anton can help thousands of kids during his lifetime, which he will. But it's more than that. By pointing out what Anton is able to accomplish, right, somebody who most of the rest of the country or society wouldn't really believe in, right? When we believe in a guy like Anton and we tell his story and we celebrate what he's done, he inspires thousands of others to look within themselves to figure out how they can contribute. Can we talk, you know, at some point, so right now we're kind of talking about community efforts to help, you know, people at a very kind of fundamental level, family unit, gangs, things like that, even educational institutions. At one point in the book, you write, America needs a better business culture. And it's, you know, it's clear that a lot of people, certainly you guys do, I do, you know, we express ourselves, we express our core values, our desires, our aspirations through the work that we do. Coke Industries makes a lot and a lot of money because it's doing, you know, it's making things that people want at a price that they're willing to pay. Talk about the two things, I guess. Charles, at one point you write that when you took over Coke Industries after your father died in the late 60s, you had to change the company's culture to one of empowerment, not control. Can you explain a little bit what that meant? Right, it was before my father talked me into joining the company by telling me he was very ill and so I wasn't able to really run the company and so I wasn't doing that well and he didn't have long to live, so either I come back to run it or he would have to sell it. And he said, you already own a piece of the company so I was looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity and I didn't think I'd get a better offer than that one. So I, and he was true to his word, I mean, he had been growing up, he had been tough on me, he had me work at tough jobs from the time I was six all my free time because he didn't want me to be a country club bum but I was reluctant to come back because I didn't need more tough stuff. I wanted to be independent but he gave me that offer and he was true to his word. So he said I could run it any way I wanted except I needed his approval to sell it. And so the first thing I saw is there was a protectionist mentality in the company and that is we're not going to do new things, we're not going to take risks, we're just going to do the status quo and I'm coming and I'm a kid. No, I want to do new things, I want to blow it up. And so I, as I was learning these principles of human progress, I created this model of succeeding by creating virtuous cycles of mutual benefit in the company. And what that means is you figure out what capabilities you have that will create value for others starting with customers but also your employees, your suppliers, your communities and society as a whole. And so that's what, so we changed the whole and then you continually transform yourself to do more and more to build additional capabilities and this leads to new opportunities and the new opportunities lead to the need to create new capabilities and so on in never ending cycles of improvement and progress. And that's what we started doing. And this stuff worked. That's why I say it transformed my life. I didn't think I was that capable and I wasn't, the ideas were. And so we focused on creating value for others and empowering our employees from the bottom up. Yeah, what does that mean? Because, you know, one of the things I've read all of your books over the years and I've heard a lot about market-based management and intellectually I understand the idea and it sounds great. But then as a former manager myself, I don't know how to implement it. What does it mean to kind of set your employees free to figure out what to do? The first job of every supervisor is to enable their reports, their employees to self-actualize. And what that means is to work with employees to find what gifts they have, what they'll be passionate about, and then rather than stick them in a role, most of which they aren't good at, design the roles to fit the capabilities of the employees and then give them the tools and with the technology today, we've, for example, we've invested in nearly 30 billion in technology within the last decade and we use this technology not to control our employees but to empower them and give them the tools and the knowledge and the authority to make more decisions and we are getting innovations, improvements from all levels through there and that passion has gone up. So when I look at society and what could be done and how you change the culture, I mean, I like it and how this is working here. So this isn't just a theory, this is something I see every day. And just to set what the stakes are, Nick, I mean 70% of people, almost 70% of people report that they are completely disengaged from their job. They don't find any fulfillment in their job. So you think about the human potential that's just being lost by the way business typically runs. If you can change that and you do things like what Charles just talked about, focus on self-actualization in the workplace. I mean, not only are you going to get personal value out of it, but think about the productivity you can unleash. You know, Charles in the book, you say that your basic dynamic is trial and error and you emphasize that you made a lot of errors during your career. What's one of the biggest kind of signature mistakes that you made as the head of Koch Industries? Well, I look at it as, I follow the Stoic philosophy, that is, I'm grateful for everything and entitled to nothing. And this is consistent with Thomas Edison's philosophy. Remember when he tried all these things to make a new battery, 9,000 things that didn't work. And his friends say, well, God, I'm sorry you had all this failure. He said, I haven't had any failures. I've found 9,000 things that don't work. And I look at our failures and that's what's made us successful. And if you're not, the only way you can never make a mistake or never have a failure if you don't try anything new. And guess what? That means you have total failure because you're going out of business given the process of creative destruction that's going on at light speed pace today. So we're ramping it up. So we're driving more creative destruction than what we tell every employee, whatever you're doing, that you may be best at the world at what you're doing. Our business may be the leader in all that. It's not good enough. If we don't improve faster than others, we're going out of business and get everybody thinks, so everybody comes to work. How do I drive innovation and find new and better ways to create more value for our customers and our other constituencies? One of the more interesting sections of the book I think is when you're talking about kind of building a business, a better business culture, you guys really go after corporate welfare. You talk about a corporate welfare crisis. And I would like you to talk a little bit about Coke Industries was a major producer of ethanol and yet you lobbied to end direct subsidies of ethanol. How did you sell that to your investors? How did you sell that to your employees? Because that seems to be, you know, that sounds like it would be kind of a tough sell because this is what we don't, I mean, we train everybody, educate all our employees in our philosophy. And a good part of their rewards are they helping us build this culture of creating value for others. And it, when people focus in their career on creating value for others rather than gaming the system and trying to be succeed by tricks or playing politics or whatever, it transforms them. It changes their habits. I can't tell you how many employees have retired or left the company who either come in to see me or write me and tell me that this transformed their life. Now, not only in business, but in working with their children, with their families, in their philanthropy, even some say, I've worked with my church or my synagogue to help them be more effective in helping their parishioners. So this, this stuff is so powerful. You can see at 85 people ask me why you, why you work so hard now? Because I'm, I mean, what am I going to do? I love doing this. And when I see that it really helps people and empowers them, man, that's what makes my day. So a big error that you kind of confess to or discuss in the book is having spent a lot of time trying to elect most of mostly Republicans in political battles. You had infamous notorious coveted seminars a couple times of years for many years where you raise money for particular politicians. And you said, you know, the Wall Street Journal quoted you, this is in the book. Boy, did we screw up. What a mess talking about partisanship. How did you come to the understanding that trying to kind of work the political system in that way was not working? Well, I, I always had that, that view. I, well, I've been at this for nearly 60 years. And for the, the first 50, I wasn't in politics at all. Because politics, as you, as you see, everything we, we try to do is based on mutual benefit. And politics can't do that, because it isn't win-win, it's win-lose. You're running against somebody, and either you win, it's not going to be mutual benefit. So, and that's, and then, then I've taken to heart what George Washington's insight and his farewell address, beware of political parties, because I'll tell you that there were, to help you, and they're really there to gain and keep power. So we stayed out of politics in that, but then we got in. So why, why did you get into politics? Well, that's what, that's what I was saying. It seemed like you were, you were kind of on the right path, what, what drew you into it. Yeah, but okay, so we, we started getting into policies. Okay, because we realized we can't just do it with education and empowering people. We've got to have policies that allow this. If we have too many policies that are holding people back that aren't based on equal rights and mutual benefit, that aren't, they're keeping people from realizing their potential. So we needed to change those policies. And then as we got into that, okay, it's hard to find politicians that will really work to empower people or have policies. So we need to help elect some. And then Brian can, can tell how we, how we got it, because I, I, I, I don't say the right things when I get into it. Well, you know, this is a libertarian podcast. So you can curse. That's right. That's right. If you're going to curse, it's going to be a, you know, there's a, there's a pretty big misunderstanding, I think, about even the extent to involvement in politics back in the middle 2010s, right, which is really when, when this experiment was going on. And this was coming after the financial crisis was kind of the between 2009, 2010 and 2014 was this experiment with, Hey, if we want to find politicians that are going to be truer to the principles of empowerment, let's get engaged in politics, right? And figure out if we can do it. We, we played the game like, like everybody does, we picked a team in case it was the Republicans, not because we were Republicans or because we had any love for the party necessarily, but because we thought that was going to be the most productive way to find people that would pass policies to empower people. Three cycles later, experiment run, recognize, Hey, this isn't working the way that it ought to. So let's do something different. But even at that heyday of our involvement in the political process, that was never more than 10% of everything that this philanthropic community was doing. And it's never exceeded that today. It's less than that, but we're still engaged in politics. We're just doing it differently. Yeah. Well, let me just point out that politicians like women of easy virtue come pretty cheaply. So you don't have to spend that much, right? You're not going to get us to curse, Nick. You're not going to get us to curse. But so yeah, you talk in the book about, you know, that you picked partisanship or partisanship over kind of policy. And then you're talking about part partnership over partisanship. So we never picked partnership partisanship over policy. We thought for a while partisanship would be the path towards better policy. But again, you know, you live and learn. And what do you think we did? What went wrong with the Republican Party? Well, I don't think so. It's it's what George Washington said. What I mean, what is the what is the politicians profit and loss? It's whether they get reelected. That's profit. And if they lose, they had a big loss. So, so they're going to do whatever will get reelected. So we had all these, we supported these politicians who, who said they were for all this stuff. We vetted them on that. And they were saying all the right things. And then I'd be watching TV and they would be coming up for the opposite. You know, I got to tell you, Charles, it's hard to take you seriously now if you're only now or only a few years ago was realizing that politicians lie when they're moving their lips. No, no, I told you, I stayed out for 50 years, but I got sucked into it. Anyway, so I said to Brian, I said, I said, Brian, we've got to change. Who, who were the big disappointments? Can I, you know, I, I hate to use a trope from the left, but name some names. Who were the biggest disappointments that you, you guys kind of backed? You said like these are good bets to pursue limited effective government strategies. And then they just didn't deliver. I think what we're more interested in talking about is what does it look like going forward, right? And this is what we talk about in the book is look, what you learn from that experience is not that politicians lie. Of course, we knew that, right? But what you learn is that the party system is structured not to produce good policy, but to produce perpetual party. And so how do you disrupt that? How do you change those dynamics? Because look, even when you talk to the folks in, in Congress, right, people are frustrated. You know, a lot of those folks didn't come here to do what's going on right now, but they don't see a better way. And it's worth pointing out however unpopular Donald Trump has been during his presidency, Congress is like half as popular. So that's right. Yeah, that's right. They have their own problems to deal with. But, but policy coalitions can be formed not through this notion of sort of bipartisanship, which doesn't tend to lead to much profound outcome, but through a real nonpartisan approach, right? The idea that we'll work with anybody to do right regardless of party. Yeah, it's in the context of, because you guys were heavily involved in this with criminal justice reform and the first step back. And that seems to be a place where an unlikely coalition of people who didn't have a lot in common except for those issues in the criminal justice bucket came together and, you know, it actually got something done. And we see that as a model, you know, so you look at criminal justice reform, what happened is exactly as you said, we looked for common ground rather than focusing on the things that separated us with the groups that we worked with, put together a coalition of well over 30 groups, right? Everybody from the ACLU to the American Conservative Union, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers, I mean, you name it, it was a who's who of a coalition, real diverse. And what that did was it said to politicians, hey, in the past, you know, for 25 years, I mean, you know, this reason's worked on this as well as anybody has, criminal justice reform was off limits because you'd get Willie Horton, right? If you were a Republican or a Democrat, if you dared to speak the truth about the criminal justice system, you risked your opponent basically pointing to the one person that did harm. And that would come back to get you out of office. So all these diverse groups came back and said, okay, if you're a Democrat or a Republican, do the right thing, we got your back. And because of the diversity of that coalition, that it was robust, and it allowed both parties to do the right thing. That's a model that we think we can apply to a lot of different issues. Yeah, what are some of those other issues that you're particularly interested in? I mean, the one that is ready to go right now, and we're very hopeful going forward is immigration. In what way? I mean, we have, you know, one of the weird, and maybe obviously, you know, it was going to turn out this way. But under Donald Trump, who was elected being very anti-immigrant, pro-immigrant sentiment in America is historic highs. That's right. But it's also true that George Bush, who won re-election in 2004, made comprehensive immigration reform. And, you know, it was kind of good, good reform. It was more friendly to immigrants. It didn't get a pass. Obama didn't get a pass. So how are you going to affect change in immigration? We think the change maker here is what we just talked about. In all of those past cases, you pursue a partisan strategy. That's the way the policy making has always been done in D.C. But if we can bring the kind of diverse coalition that we brought to criminal justice reform to an issue like improving our immigration system, you change the dynamic, right? We also see it, for instance, on foreign policy, you know, stopping the crazy adventurism that is so counterproductive, you know, foreign wars that have nothing to do with national security. Here again, you've got a dynamic. It's 70% of the country thinks we ought to be out of Afghanistan. Why aren't we? Right? Because neither party wants to give the other a win. But if you can bring that diverse coalition to that, you can make really important changes that help people's lives, that help the national security and help our fiscal situation, by the way. Right. Can I ask, related to this, where is Koch Industries or where is the Charles Koch Foundation on an issue like climate change, which seems to be, it has become a background issue where everybody basically acknowledges that climate change is happening, that human activity contributes to it, and that, you know, we've got to do something about it. Where does that fit into the kind of basket of things that you're pursuing? Yeah. Well, as you've seen, I've commented on this on several interviews. And so for many years, I've been saying that, okay, the temperature's been rising for over a century now, and human activity has contributed to it. But the approach is wrong. This top-down approach, which they're using supposedly around the world, animations keep rising. So it's not accomplishing what has accomplished and will accomplish it, are innovations, bottom-up innovations that, for example, substitute natural gas for coal. And so this is what we're working on at Koch Industries. As I said, we've invested nearly $30 billion in technology. And that's led to us, let's say, our production of fossil fuels a decade ago was maybe around a half of our business. Now it's just a fraction. And our emissions are less across the board in our plants. And we're working on inventing things that will do two things, not just have less emissions, but will be cheaper and more affordable rather than much more expensive and unreliable, which makes people's lives worse. So we go back to our basic, we're committed to making people's lives better and succeed through mutual benefits. So we've developed a system to automate the detection of emissions from plants, of releases. And that greatly reduces the number and magnitude of releases. We've developed a superior 5G connection system, communication system for electric cars. We've invested in a company that has electric vehicles for delivery yards, where the whole thing is automated. And we're now invested and we're using this in our plants. And then we've invested in a new a small scale modular nuclear plant technology that I mean, that's a huge could make a huge difference. And it's safer and cheaper if it once again doesn't get over-regulated. So it makes it impossible and so on. And I could go on and on. These are the things we're doing because we believe that's that's that's the future. And that that's the only way we can deal with whatever these problems are going to be in the future from temperature rising is through bottom up innovations. You know, you mentioned regulation and Donald Trump who, you know, in his four years in office and likely his only four years in office, he came in talking about deregulating things. And most of the business people I know that I've talked to has said that there was a palpable difference during the Trump years then under the Obama years, for instance, and that regulation seemed to lessen, even if you don't necessarily see it in the number of pages in the federal register and things like that. How do you guys feel and not just about business, but like, was Donald Trump good for the country? And then also, what are you looking forward to? What's good about Biden and what what worries you about as we move into a new political era? My sense is that that's what a lot of people are asking in the country right now. But like we're right in the book, right? There is so much more to life than politics that if we if we ask too much of politicians, whoever they are, whatever party we are as a country likely to be disappointed. And so what we're trying to do is encourage people to look beyond sort of that narrow lens of politics. Look, politics plays an important role, but it's a limited role, then that's by design in our country. We want to find ways that people can come together outside of politics, government policy. I am right there with you, but let me press you, Brian. I mean, was was Trump was it, you know, was it was it a good thing that he was president for four years and kind of burned down certain types of institutions. And when we look at somebody like Joe Biden, I'm thinking, you know, from a from a kind of standard libertarian analysis, Joe Biden promised $11 trillion in new spending. He's not going to be able to deliver on that. But like, does that make you look forward to the future? Or does it make it harder to get outside of politics? Did Trump actually make it harder to get outside of politics? Because we all talked about him every minute of every day. I'll put it this way. I think that there are a lot of ideas that are being offered to solve some very real problems in our country, right? I mean, the division in our country is real. I think it's a reflection of deeper challenges that we talk about in the book, the core institutions not empowering people to keep up with the pace of change. And different flavors of top down can appeal because they seem almost like magic wands. But what we try to do in the book is show as history does, that it's a lot tougher than that, right? That they're really the only way to overcome some of these problems is not to take, you know, whatever it is, the flavor of the top down of the day, but really do the hard work to help to build an inclusive society that empowers everybody. And so that's, I mean, that's what we're focused on. That's what we think the future can hold. And look, politicians are going to play an important role in that because government policy creates the conditions for these other institutions to be productive. But ultimately, the majority of energy needs to be outside of government, outside of government policy in the voluntary sector, right? I mean, I mean, this is reason. This is what we've dedicated our careers to. Well, this is a good way to pivot to the libertarian movement. And Charles, you know, more than any individual, and certainly with you and your brother, you created, envisioned, funded the libertarian movement as we know it. I believe the oldest institution that you are continuously involved with was the Institute for Humane Studies. Most of the operations that you're talking about are in this voluntary sector. Could you talk about what drew you to something like IHS? And, you know, how has that played out? And how does that kind of reflect your vision of what libertarian philanthropy and a libertarian society should look like? Well, what drew me to the Institute was that, as I said, that these ideas transform my life and enabled me to accomplish more than I ever dreamed. And so I wanted to help as many other people as possible be exposed to these ideas so they could help them do the same. And that's what the Institute was working on. And I guess just for people who don't know, the Institute for Humane Studies funds seminars, scholarships, academics for college students as well as professors, young faculty, people who are involved in having a life of the mind. Yeah, and that's the same thing with the Mercatus Center. It does similar things and a somewhat different methodology. And that's what attracted me. And that's where I met Brian when he first came to work out there out of college. So those are the kind of institutions I was interested in. But we were the people who believed in these bottom-up ideas. It was mainly talking about the theory and the history, how it worked through history. And I said, we've got to deal with, show how it can deal with real problems. And so that's why I helped start the Cato Institute to take these abstractions and apply them to real issues. And then I said, well, we've also got to show that these ideas really work to change people's lives. So we've got to go find people, professors, people in communities. I provided the C Capital for the Institute for Justice to start. I started an organization in the seventies called, we initially named it BLAST, Business Leaders Against Subsidies and Terrorists. And I got Milton Friedman to work with me to become the chairman of the advisors. And the idea was to get business people to see that they're better off not going for short-term profits, rigging the system, and really creating value for others. And a typical letter I got back, I mean, no one would have answered me, but because Milton was there, they said, God, I love what you and Milton are doing. I totally agree with, but it doesn't apply to my industry. For example, one made jeans and he said, gosh, because if we're put out of business by foreign competition, who's going to make the boys jeans in times of war? And so, oh my God. So anyway, so we changed it to Citizens First Sound Economy. And because citizens were the ones who were getting screwed by this. And the business people were making money short-term, because long-term they're destroying society with this. But that's just a minor point, I guess. What you did and from things that I've read and, you know, just talking with people, one of the things that you did, Charles, was you kind of envisioned a series of parallel institutions. You know, if libertarian thought was certainly not represented, it wasn't even represented in the Republican Party really in the 60s very much, much less in the media, much less in academia, much less in kind of business roundtables. I mean, do you feel like you succeeded in helping to create a kind of sources of parallel information and kind of community building or mission building? Well, I feel this when, for example, when we were first, I first got involved in the Institute of Remain Studies, we would be lucky to get six professors in the country to come to participate in a seminar. Now, depending on how you count them, there are thousands of professors who are doing it. So, and so that's in that. And then, and then what we've done, my wife and I 30 years ago started an organization called Youth Entrepreneurs in one school in a tough area to help these kids find their gift. And so it's not just classroom, what I call one dimensional schooling, teach the test, top down, everybody treated the same, but tailored for each individual. And it blew me away that these kids who were failing everything started making straight As and they were transformed and then went on to be successful. And now it's in over 20 states. And we have sponsors in all these states that are they're helping it work. So it was so I look at all those things we did in all the institutions and how it's, it's helped. And now, now we, we work with people across the whole ideological spectrum and all the institution. Now, how do we get it so it's critical mass and it reaches everybody. And that's what we're you asked what we're doing in the future. We've got to scale this and we've got to get the message out a lot better. And that's what we hope believe in people will help do. Yeah, Brian, that's, you know, I've been at reason for 27 years, I believe. I know you've been involved in IHS, Mercatus, etc. 20 years, what 20 years. Yeah. And you know, we can certainly say that in that past time, our reach, our visibility, I think our influence has gotten bigger. But it's, you know, it's not where I think anybody in the libertarian movement would like it to be, you know. And so what are the deficiencies in the existing kind of, you know, structures or organizations or mindsets and where do you see it going? Because as the head of CKI, you're going to be in a position where you can real, you're going to be making a lot of bets on what's going to play in the future. So could you talk about that? Yeah, look, I'll, I'll, I'll give you two answers, right? And I think they're complimentary. One, I think is a mechanical answer, right? We need to do a better job of the mechanics of sharing the opportunities for people to get engaged in really empowering people from the bottom up, right? I mean, that's ultimately what we're talking about, helping people to find how they can live their best lives by contributing the lives of others. That's, that's the liberal project. And, and from a mechanical perspective, organizations that have been dedicated to that mission, we've been pretty clunky and we're getting better, I think, you know, I mean, these 27 years, 20 years, we've seen a lot of improvement over time. We've got a ways to go. We can talk about that if you're interested. I think there's some pretty basic stuff that can be done to dramatically improve the effectiveness. What, what, what's one quick example? Practice what we preach, right? This division of labor by comparative advantage. For a long time, you remember this, right? There were these organizations that were kind of silos, right? Each one of our groups, well, we were, we were the one that we're going to save the world, right? We could, we could solve it all on our own. And we'd see each other at events and parties, cocktail parties, that sort of thing. And we'd, we talked to each other, but we wouldn't really work together. And that's changing quite a lot. And I think that's a really positive sign. And it just interjected then back in the early days, there was a lot of divisiveness and people not speaking to each other. I mean, it was unbelievable. I mean, gosh, we got to work together. But, but the more fundamental answer, Nick, I think, and this is the thing that I, I think, you know, what reason is doing right now in some other groups, I think is really, really productive on this front. We got to take up Hayek's challenge, right? We got to once again make the building of a free society an intellectual adventure, or as he says, a deed of courage. And there's ever a time for courage for those of us who believe that, that liberalism and empowering people to find new and better ways to contribute in society. If there was ever a time for us to sort of stand up with courage and advocate for that, I mean, now is the time. And so if we can bring that spirit into our efforts, and as Charles says, put together, put aside some of these petty divisions and welcome more and more people who are out there looking for a better way into this liberal project, right? This, this, this charge that Hayek has given us for generations. I mean, I think we ought to be, we ought to expect to see a whole lot more progress. And you know, look, let's not lament where we are. You know, Don Boudreau is somebody who always reminds me, hey, we got our problems and we do, but time horizon matters. And so if you look, say, from the 60s until today, and you just consider the number of people in the world that are living under more liberal conditions, however you want to measure that. I mean, it's a tremendous success of these ideas. And I think we got to keep that perspective in mind as well. Well, the other, the other insight of Hayek's is, is to make progress. You can't continue to use the language that were decades ago. You've got to find where people are, particularly young people and what language appeals to them and put it in those terms. So you, we have to go where people are and show them these ideas in ways they will relate to. And that's what we're, that's what we're trying to do. And people said, well, that isn't the way we used to talk about it. Well, no, we got to innovate. We've got to do things differently. No, you know, if they don't want to hear praxeology, they can go to hell. Yeah. Well, I was going to name my, my, my first book, The Epistemology of Praxeology, and it was pointed out that would only appeal to you. You know, Russ, Russ Roberts, another guy that, that, that's familiar to your, your crowd is, I used to work with him at the Mercatus Center for a long time. He would say, you know, he Russ wrote novels, right? That was his idea to try to get more people engaged in ideas. He would say to me, look, Brian, as much as we'd like them to, nobody's sitting around campfires singing songs about praxeology, right? But today, I mean, we've got the opportunity, you know, the examples in the book, people like Scott Strode, people like Antong Lucky, people like, like the other social entrepreneurs, they are literally sitting around singing songs about the work that they're doing. I mean, these are the, the heroes of liberalism going forward. And then we get musicians together. But they're singing songs. And they're, oh my God. And they tell their stories about how they overcame it. And then they have a song about it. Oh, right. Boy, it brings tears to your eyes. I guess this is a good time to invoke Bob Dylan, who shows up very early in the book. And, you know, arguably, one of the most controversial claims in your book is that you say that Bob Dylan absolutely deserved the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature. I heartily agree. Charles, you, you quote from, it's all right, mom only bleeding early on in the book. He not busy being born is busy dying. Expand on that a little bit. How does, how does that summarize a lot of what you're talking about? Well, I mean, Bob Dylan is like me. He's, he's, he's totally committed and obsessed with his gift. And he has a gift for understanding the human condition and putting that in a way that people relate to through his songs. So he's, he has a tremendous gift. I understand that if he's having a party and the song starts to come, he leaves the party and goes down to his studio and writes the song while it's with him. And that's, he reminds me of me. I wish I could write a song. But no, he has, he's constantly reinvented himself as well. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's it. Continual transformation. And, and he is amazing. I have his whole book of songs, which I, I refer to. And I, there's so many that have great, powerful messages and that is just, it's very inspiring. You think of Dylan never picked up an electric guitar, right? Because he kind of, he stayed within the bounds of what was, and look, he was a very successful folk musician at the time. But he broke those barriers. And I mean, imagine the music that we wouldn't have today if he hadn't done that. Right. Brian, do you, you're also a Dylan fan? What is, what's your favorite Dylan song? If you have one. It's an impossible question to answer, right? But I'll give you one and I won't explain why. It's Blood on the Tracks. It's called Idiot Wind. Sure. And I'm going to, I'm going to stop talking about that. Okay. That's, yeah, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves. You got it. You got it. My mind is just, mine is forever young. Yes. All right. And, and there's two versions of that on the same album. So that's, you can pick as you're being born. As a final question, Charles, you, you and your brother, who was a longtime trustee on Reasons Board of Trustees, you guys were among the most hated people in America, you know, for many years, may still well be, you know, and kind of the way that George Soros had became this icon of hatred and contempt for people on the right. Just what did it, what does it feel like to be, you know, the subject of that kind of attention? Well, I, I, I, I'm a big fan of Carl Popper's scientific method, which is develop a, a testable proposition and then go find what's wrong with it and get other people to criticize it. And why do I do that? And that's the way we run our business because my, my little ego is strong enough to handle the criticism, but it isn't strong enough to handle the massive failures that come by not getting better knowledge. And I don't know why everybody doesn't have that rather than protect their, you know, I don't want, I know all the answers, shut up, do what I say, and then have disasters. And so I, I look at the criticism. I mean, some is constructive and, and then, okay, we need to learn from that. And then I need, then learn, okay, why, why are these people doing it? Or do they want to shut us down? And then, okay, how do we, how do we deal with that? So each of these attacks is, I find very educational. So I want to learn from them and learn where they're coming from, how we deal with that, because I want to be successful. And unless you can deal with criticism and overcome it, you're, you're never going to be successful. Like, like John Stuart Mill says, those who only know their side of the case, no little of that. Well, we're going to leave it there. Thank you very much. Brian Hooks of the Charles Koch Institute and of Stand Together, Charles Koch of Koch Industries. The book is Believe in People, Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World. Gentlemen, thanks so much for talking to Reason today. Thanks, Nick. Thank you, Nick. It was fun. Great interview.