Support For The Koch Brothers From An Unlikely Source: The United Steelworkers
31st March 2011
Due to the sheer number of jobs that directly or indirectly benefit from Koch Industries, the Left’s undertaking to topple the Koch brothers and their companies may have the negative consequence of actually hurting those the Left purports to want to help—namely union workers. This has a top official with the United Steelworkers concerned.
One of the most glaring holes in the distributionist agenda is their perennial refusal to cope intellectually with production — their fight is about how to divide up a pie that apparently just drops from heaven — and so they keep shooting themselves in most of their lower body when they start agitating for ‘social justice’.
Notice that the union defense of the Koch brothers isn’t based on what’s fair or what’s best for America; it’s totally based on what’s best for union members. The essential message is ‘don’t cut off our nose to spite your face’. So principle is all well and good when only the other side is getting hurt, but another thing entirely when it comes out of the wallets of the kind of people the Left is supposedly defending.
So the problem for the advocates of a boycott against Koch is that it can only marginally hurt Koch, and the workers who are the epitome of what advanced manufacturing jobs in the United States ought to look like, would be the first casualties of a boycott. Of course, this will eventually drive a wedge between groups that are otherwise in political alignment.
In other words, don’t go pissing in the soup.
As in most such cases, ‘follow the money’ is a good rule of thumb.