eXiled eXclusive! Read The Orignal Letter Charles Koch Sent To Friedrich von Hayek Telling Him To Sign Up For Social Security

eXiled Alert! / Koch Whores / September 29, 2011

By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames

Here is the private letter from Charles Koch to Nobel Prize economist Friedrich Hayek, godfather of today’s free-market movement. The letter was obtained by Yasha Levine from the Hayek Archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It is part of a series of correspondences in which Hayek, Koch and the University of Chicago all reveal themselves to be fans of state-backed health care and retirement benefits in private, while publicly denouncing and destroying these same programs.

This is the first time Charles Koch’s letter to Hayek promoting Social Security has been released to the public.

Below are digital images of Koch’s letter along with the text below. Read Yasha Levine and Mark Ames’ article about the “Koch-Hayek Social Security-Fanboy Letters” in The Nation: Monster Koch Bust: Charles Koch Used Social Security to Lure Friedrich von Hayek to America.

***

Institute for Humane Studies

1134 Crane Street, Menlo Park. California 94023

Telephone (415) 323-2464
CHARLES C. KOCH. President
August 10, 1973

Professor F. A. Hayek

Firmianstrasse 17 A

A-5020 Salzburg

Austria

Dear Professor Hayek:
In reference to our telephone conversation last week, I am sorry that your health is such that you do not feel able to come to the Institute for an extended period but we certainly are pleased that you may be able to join us for two or three weeks in connection with our proposed conference on Austrian Economics.
…Although you will be unable to be a the Institute for an extended period, you may be interested in the information that we uncovered on the insurance and other benefits that would be available to you in this country. Since you have paid into the United States Social Security Program for a full forty quarters, you are entitled to Social Security payments while living anywhere in the Free World. Also, at any time you are in the United States, you are automatically entitled to hospital coverage. In order to be eligible for medical coverage you must apply during the registration period which is anytime from January 1 to March 31. For your further information, I am enclosing a pamphlet on Social Security.
We are very hopeful that you will be able to join us at this conference as we feel it would be a tremendous boost, not only for the conference, but for the growing interest in Austrian economics in the United States…
Sincerely,
Charles Koch

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27 Comments

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1. vortexgods | September 29th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
You know, I bet no one had the foresight, after Friedrich Hayek died, to gouge his eyes out so he wouldn’t be able to find his way back from Hell…
2. RanDomino | September 29th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
BRILLIANT! *clinking beer glasses*
3. Rehmat | September 29th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Capitalists, Socialists and Communists – all claim their own brands of humane agenda. However, if one look around – a great majority of people living under those systems have gained nothing financially and socially. Under all those three systems, a tiny minority of elites control the rest of the majority. The disparity between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ is widening every passing year.
Maurice Ulrich in his article entitled “Equality and Freedom” expose the western hypocrisy:
“In developed countries, in France, how can anyone justify the fact that the CEO of a big corporate group earns three hundred times more than the employees of the same group? What is equality for the most humble employees, the unemployed, the youth going from one temporary job to another without any security, immigrants deprived of the right to vote, the undocumented, the homeless?
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/equality-freedom-and-the-west/
4. Zhu Bajie | September 29th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
The hogs are just like the farmers!
5. Mason C | September 29th, 2011 at 8:35 pm
This story is the heavyweight gobsmack champeen of the decade, even better than Ayn Rand gettin’ on the socialist gravy train. If I had two spare nickels, I’d send both of them to you.
6. Inspector Fu | September 29th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Oh I see exactly what you are trying to prove with a letter from Koch to Hayek…Hayek secretly opted into SS and Koch is is simply reminding him that its okay to admit it, he is among friends and should benefit from the wonderful program, using other Americans’ tax money that they paid in just to cover Hayek’s medical benefits…Mises.org never says anything half as honest as this. Thanks!
7. franc black | September 30th, 2011 at 4:50 am
Hey there eXiled readers, I know you haven’t seen me around for a while. I’m a New Media Strategies minimum wage sockpuppet slave, who works hard cleaning up the Kochs’ oligarchical slime trail. And let me tell you that we here at NMS have been working day and night to figure out a strategy that’ll allow us to sneak our billionaire apologist propaganda past the All Seeing, All Knowing, Mighty eXiled Censor. We couldn’t come up with anything new, so we’ll just go with the good one of our classics. I’m sure you’ll recognize it instantly. See if you can name it:
Big f’n deal. So the old a-hole needed some help with medical bills.
People against social security still pay taxes and so are entitled to it. Just because they are against it, doesn’t mean they should take the moral high road and refuse services that they paid for.
It’s like when you are out-voted on pizza versus lasagna. All your friends wanted pizza, and you were pissed off — doesn’t mean you aren’t going to eat the f’n pizza. You have needs. You eat.
Don’t drum this up so much, it’s just not that relevant. You can find better stories
8. DK | September 30th, 2011 at 7:39 am
It’s funny to see libertards everywhere miss the point here. They blather on about how Hayek favored socialized medicine and an “income floor,” in otherwords, he was a socialist by tea party standards. But this isn’t about Hayek, he’s dead. This is about the Kochs, who are very much alive, and what they want for America now.
9. Rehmat | September 30th, 2011 at 10:23 am
@Inspector Fu – Don’t worry. Hannah Arendt is not alive to tell the true story behind Zionists and SS…..
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/hannah-arendt-and-eichmanns-show-trail/
10. franc black | September 30th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
I’m flattered: it’s first time that the moderator has given one of my posts any attention “New Media Strategies minimum wage sockpuppet slave” lol … I’m actually a freelance writer from Canada who really dislikes political extremism (in all its forms) and enjoys this site … but paranoid rants on MSNBC aren’t going to win you the talented friends that your cause needs in order to progress …
… and …
I understand the initiative to expose the Koch-suckers, but am just pointing out (with the same type of zeal of your editorial staff) that a 30+ year-old (personal) letter from Koch to Hayek might seem sexy during your info hunt, but actually makes you look desperate for dirt.
I really think you could do better down there in the good old US of A. Why not focus on the Wall Street thingie with some live reporting … now THAT’S sexy journalism !
11. Cum | September 30th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Hahahah, fucking hilarious!
PS rehmat please stop spraying your nazi diarrhea over the comments section.
12. streamfortyseven | September 30th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
OK, so Koch tried to get Hayek to take Social Security and Medicare benefits. Where is the evidence that Hayek actually did so? Because I’m trying to find a way to deal with this …whattaya call it again? … oh yeah, this “cognitive dissonance.” it doesn’t feel good. So I’m looking for a way to explain this. Please help me. Pleeeeeeeeeease.
13. RanDomino | September 30th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Okay, so one of the major founders of modern Libertardianism offered Hayak socialist socialized Social Security (socialism), which makes Hayak MAYBE not a hypocrite [that at least is the new libertard line we’re supposed to push]… but DEFINITELY makes Koch a hypocrite. [Master Koch told us to say this, to pretend we all don’t like our Master]
14. David Veksler | September 30th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
“The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism. Those who advocate public scholarships, have no right to them; those who oppose them, have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.
Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . .
The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of accepting social security, unemployment insurance or other payments of that kind. It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling co-workers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.
The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of government research grants.
The growth of the welfare state is approaching the stage where virtually the only money available for scientific research will be government money. (The disastrous effects of this situation and the disgraceful state of government-sponsored science are apparent already, but that is a different subject. We are concerned here only with the moral dilemma of scientists.) Taxation is destroying private resources, while government money is flooding and taking over the field of research.
In these conditions, a scientist is morally justified in accepting government grants—so long as he opposes all forms of welfare statism. As in the case of scholarship-recipients, a scientist does not have to add self-martyrdom to the injustices he suffers.”
“The Question of Scholarships,”
The Objectivist, June, 1966, 11
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html
15. David Veksler | September 30th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Imagine that a thief continually stole a third of your salary your entire working life. Is it so hypocritical to get a small fraction of that money back? Does getting back some of what was stolen from you invalidate your moral opposition to theft?
16. Petkov | September 30th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
How can comments be “comments” when retarded commentards “can and will be censored at whim and without warning”? Wasn’t retarded sockpuppetry exactly what the Exiled is supposedly fighting against after they experienced it themselves in Russia?
Censorship by any other name is STILL a great thing when it improves my retarded writings.
17. Zhu Bajie | September 30th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
@7 “Big f’n deal. So the old a-hole needed some help with medical bills.”
He should’ve tried putting his hands on the TV when Oral Roberts shouted “Heal!” like the rest of us!
18. Fischbyne | October 1st, 2011 at 12:34 am
A real trophy.
I read that Joel Pollak credits Exiled Online with single-handedly instituting the libertarian hypocrisy “meme” in mainstream journalism. Which is true, now that I notice it. Libertard assertions are taken at face value by reporters far less often these days, so thanks for edumicating those dumb monkeys. I know they secretly hated the way the Reagan era reprogrammed their brains, but they couldn’t figure out how to combat Republican tropes until you came along. As for Pollak, he seems to think that using the word “meme” makes anything he says sound smart. Poor sap.
19. atlas_lied | October 2nd, 2011 at 8:29 am
I’d want to see the Koch brothers wiped out a la Randolph and Mortimer Duke in Trading Places. Unfortunately reality has the lower 99% of society being trapped in a gorilla suit and humped by an ape in heat.
20. jack kane | October 2nd, 2011 at 12:16 pm
@ 3. Rehmat
The differences between capitalism of the type we enjoy, socialism, and communism, are more cosmetic that anything. Who cares if the guys in charge are the nomenklatura, a cabal of monopolist industrialists, or an entrenched bureaucracy? Either way you have to stfu and follow orders.
In fact Lenin called his communism “state capitalism.” Worse, a bunch of high-level Wall Street bankers, including the notorious Jacob Schiff, funded the 1917 revolution. Trotsky sailed out of New York with a suitcase of WS money. Lenin went through Germany and had a case of dough, probably thanks to Warburg. During the revolution a bunch of high-level bankers traveled to Moscow disguised as a Red Cross mission. Read A. Sutton for the details.
Socialism was also invented by our oligarch friends. Look at the people behind the Fabian society and the doctrines of said society. Socialism is a counter-part to capitalism. It’s supposed to alleviate the evils of capitalism, i.e. it can’t exist sans capitalism. There is nothing “free” about socialism. You don’t get “free” education and healthcare – you pay for all through taxes. The government taxes you and then pays large private corporations to give you the “free” services. In Canada 70-80% of H.C. providers are private, i.e. the government pays them from the tax money so they make profits. What a joke. Also, with socialism, the governments, instead of printing their own money, borrow from the bankers to finance their programs.
The capitalism we have is a type of corporatist feudalism. “Free market” in this context means more power for the corporations. Because they don’t have enough. “Free market” is a meaningless term anyway. In a free market, shouldn’t countries have the right to protect themselves with tariffs? Shouldn’t people be allowed collective bargaining through unions? How does a “free market” protect from monopolism?
As to the hypocrisy of the ruling class, it is ingrained. Yesterday I was reading Plato’s “Republic.” Very quickly in that “classic” Plato informs the reader that the rulers of the State have the right to LIE, you know, for the “public” good. Not that the idea was new at Plato’s time. So yes, they lie, and the ignorant believe them.
Always fun when they get caught, though. Hayek on SS! HAHAHAHA! It’s like Marx living on Engels’s profits. Always the same shit, folks, nothing seems to ever really change.
21. Zhu Bajie | October 2nd, 2011 at 5:05 pm
@15 Imagine a giant hypocrite, saying other people don’t deserve national health insurance, but enjoying it himself. His patrons, the Kochs, could have paid his health care out of their deep pockets, but they, too, are giant hypocrites and cheapskates.
22. Dark Markets | October 2nd, 2011 at 9:29 pm
fantastic catch, Exiled!
@Rehmat: “Socialism, capitalism, communism”…
As fellow exiled writer JD wrote in his landmark book, TNW (The War Nerd), ALL POLITICS, including global strategy & empire conflicts, IS TRIBAL… based on the most basic unit of human social organization, the family.
As the bible stories of Cain & Abel; Abraham, Isaac, & Ishmael; Jacob & Essau; Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers; King David’s sons Ammon, Absalom, and Saul all portray, MURDEROUS CONFLICT can originate from WITHIN this most basic social unit, between brothers, between fathers and sons; sisters & daughters can be sacrificed for ambition (etc.)
So if Jacob can try to SWINDLE Essau out of his inheritence… if the younger Isaac (and his mother) try to SWINDLE the elder Ishmael out of his inheritence… if Jacob’s favoritism for Joseph threatens to deny the rightful inheritence to his eldest son… then it is hardly surprising that the “ideological giants” of various modern political ideologies would CHEAT on their ideological purities.
Especially, in Hayek’s case, when it comes to medical care: no medical care, no live!!
23. Dark Markets | October 3rd, 2011 at 5:17 am
@ David Veksler: “Imagine that a thief continually stole a third of your salary your entire working life. Is it so hypocritical to get a small fraction of that money back? Does getting back some of what was stolen from you invalidate your moral opposition to theft?”
I was prepared to acknowledge that SocSecurity & Medicare “WITHHOLDING” took nearly -15%- of a self-employed worker’s paycheck… you bump that percentage up, double, to 30% !!
IF RUN PROPERLY, SS & Medicare “withholding” are NOT TAXES, but MANDATORY SAVINGS – SS works as BOTH a RETIREMENT savings account, AND an INSURANCE policy; and Medicare is both health insurance and a sort of “health savings account.”
You certainly wouldn’t expect a PRIVATE company to provide those services for free!
At 99% collected to disbursed, the state simply runs these INSURANCE funds FAR MORE EFFICIENTLY than private industry, with its focus on EXTRACTING 10%, 15%, 20%, or more PROFIT ratios.
SO – WHY are these funds (SS & Medicare) “insolvent”???
Because you FAIL to acknowledge the ability of the bankers & fund managers to PUMP & DUMP pension funds,
…or use Bernanke/Greenspan CREATED-OUT-OF-THIN-AIR Fed (bernanke) bucks $$ to go on LBO buy out sprees –
– as the 1987 movie “Wall St.” portrays “GREED IS GOOD” Gordon Gecko using “Blue Star Airlines OVERFUNDED PENSION PLAN” as ace card means to LEVERAGE a buyout, where he then intends to HACK the company to pieces – meaning the pension fund (with no new money coming in) will swiftly go bust – pure PARASITE, PREDATORY, vampire squid finance.
In real life, KKR, Wasserstein-Perella, GoddamnSachs, and other close-downstream of Fed’s FREE fiat money (to CONNECTED banksters, only)LBO loan shark operators, make Gordon Gecko look like chump change…
(to see the crime enacted against the American people, go look up the St. Louis Fed’s MONEY SUPPLY chart & figures – and realize that, as the Fed banksters create those TRILLIONS of dollars out of thin air, they HOARD ‘EM, and use them to, via parasite finance & debt leverage, CONTRACT the economy, so they own a proportionately GREATER SHARE !!)
24. Zhu Bajie | October 4th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Basically, Hayek was the equivalent of a crooked evangelist, enjoying in private the “sins” he condemned in public. Libertarians are the dupes who believe crooked evangelists, give them 10% of their minimum wage, etc.
25. darthfader | October 8th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
26. darthfader | October 8th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
This is my new favorite webpage, this story, right here.
27. Uncle_Billy_Cunctator | March 6th, 2012 at 2:44 am
Jack Kane, please shoot me an email to Unclebillylovescr@gmail.com I’d like to keep in touch. You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d have told me these things about 6 years ago.