Helping Hands

In the beginning of 2026, Forbes published a list of 25 most charitable billionaires. The list included people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckenberg and Charlse Koch. The latter has been donating a generous 3% of his 73 billions to causes such as poverty alleviation, arts, culture and economic education.

“I really want to put my money to work making the world a better place.”
  – David H. Koch to the Wall Street Journal

Koch Industries is also known for stealing at least 25$ million worth of oil from native American land, poisoning fisheries and drinking water supplies by dumping oil waste into it and being probably the most aggressive lobbyists against environmental regulations.

When the proven negligence of his company left two teenagers killed and one disfigured, the mood was to try and burry the story as much as possible. While the story is graphic and tragic, it is rarely reported and advertised as vividly as helping an underprivileged minority get into college or donating a painting to an art museum. But to put a picture in your head – when the internal company documents were revealed by the court, they found out that the ingeneers were warning repeateldy about this pipe and were repeatedly ignored. The cost of maintenance outweighed the costs of continuing with business as usual and this “cost/benefit analysis” was reported as an argument every time the problem was reported to the managers. When the pipe innevitably burt killing the victims, Koch industry claimed the teenagers were illegally near the pipe and that the ignition was someone else’s fault. It is beyond the scope of this article to list every law protecting humanity against corporate crime we did not get because of Koch Industries, but safe to say that being such a philantropist did not come without a cost.

The cost for this billionaire philantropy is always paid in one form or another by the average person. Not all of them are as obvious or dramtic as the Koch Industries, but it is never entirely free or benevolent either.