Drea Knufken
Kansas-based Koch industries is the kind of company that quietly owns your life. The second-largest private company in the US employs 70,000 people in 60 countries, according to Forbes.
Koch’s Georgia-Pacific makes your Brawny and Dixie cups; its Invista provides the fabric behind your Lycra workout gear; its nitrogen fertilizer feeds the produce you buy; its oil refineries and pipelines (including part of the Trans Alaska Pipeline) make sure that your car and other goods are working as desired. To top off the vertical monopolization—err, integration—other Koch subsidiaries provide filtration, wastewater treatment, boiler burners, and more systems geared at oil refineries and chemical plants. They also seem to own their own recreation, running three hunting ranches in the US, including the Yellowstone area’s Matador Ranch. Oh, and CEO Charles co-founded libertarian think tank The Cato Institute.
