The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Charles Koch: US political trajectory will continue leading country 'to hell'
“I think we continue this, but we're going to hell in a basket.”
Charles Koch: The U.S. should welcome and retain working undocumented immigrants
“And then the way we're treating illegal immigrants, the one here working and contributing, We harass them and are going to kick them out. No, we ought to welcome them and kick some of the others, the bad ones out.”
Charles Koch: Culture change requires firing overly bureaucratic executives
“A lot of us is signals like that, particularly when a bunch of them get fired for Being so bureaucratic and hierarchical.”
Charles Koch: Warren Buffett's hands-off management style wouldn't work for Koch
“Yeah, that wouldn't work for us, the stuff we buy.”
Koch Industries could not have built its management framework as public company
“And I think our view, we never could have accomplished what we've had. First of all, we never would have built a principle-based framework, and then we never would have been able to pull off this capability bounded versus industry bounded.”
Charles Koch: Trying to drive social change through one political party failed
“And the mistake we made, or I made, is trying to do it through one party. You can't do that. So now we follow Frederick Douglass' advice to work with anyone to do right and no one to do wrong.”
Charles Koch: Companies should be capability-bounded, not industry-bounded
“We need to be capability-bounded, not industry-bounded.”
Charles Koch: Bad leadership almost wiped out Koch's earnings in late 1990s
“We are, we put leaders in who were destructively motivated, and in refining, we got a leader, and they were destroying those businesses. And so it didn't almost bankrupt, but it almost wiped out all of Coke's earnings in the late 19 nineties.”
Charles Koch: Taking Koch Industries public would happen 'over my dead body'
“No, but the main threat we've had is we had stars that wanted to go pop, take us public, and I said it'd be over my dead body”
Charles Koch: A society based on power and pleasure leads to authoritarianism
“So the problem today is when you have a world that is based on power and pleasure, it's a slippery slope to totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and socialism.”
Charles Koch asserts tariffs undermine division of labor and increase costs
“And then set up all these tariffs, which undermine the divisional labor by comparative advantage, which makes everything more expensive.”
Charles Koch: Koch Industries grew its value 9,000x since the early 1960s
“And then we had, ah, 30,003, 300 employees. Now we have more than a 130,000. And ah, in, in 60 countries. And ah, we have ah, increased in value 9000 times over that period.”
Charles Koch: Koch Industries backs Cosmos to advance market-based AI
“I mean, that's why we back Cosmos, who is doing, backing people who do AI based on these principles of market-based management, based on these principles of human progress.”
Charles Koch: Father gave full operational control, requiring approval only to sell
“My father said, you can run this business any way you want. The only thing you need me, my approval on is to sell. That's the way he talked me into coming back after I said I didn't want to, ah, or I wasn't going to.”