2.
UNLIMITED POTENTIAL
“The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made.”
F.A. HAYEK1
“I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”
RICHARD RUMBOLD2
My self-transformation entered a new phase once I returned to Wichita. With fewer temptations on nights and weekends, I began to spend all my spare time reading every book I thought might help me.
In college, my studies of the hard sciences helped me develop my gift and taught me that we live in a universe governed by certain principles. Now I began to ask: Was all human life similarly ordered? My theory was that certain universal principles existed, and if I learned them, they would enable me to contribute and succeed.
My years of exposure to the scientific method motivated me to search out other theories and concepts that I could test in my life. Where once I dove headfirst into science textbooks, I was suddenly swimming in psychology, philosophy, history, economics, ethics, and many other fields. I journeyed through works from Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper, Vladimir Lenin and John Locke, along with many others from a vast array of disciplines and philosophies.
No topic was off-limits; no author was out of bounds. Even those I radically disagreed with shaped my understanding of how things work. They pointed me to helpful principles and led me to the epiphany that progress happens from the bottom up, when everyone is able to contribute. This was the beginning of my transformation. I was 28 years old.
It would take volumes to share what I learned (and am learning still) from every author and source, and the lessons they taught me about individual empowerment. Instead, let’s take a shortcut through recent human history—there you’ll see the principles of progress in action. My hope is that they will inspire you and help guide your life, as they have mine.
THE GREAT ENRICHMENT
Around two hundred years ago, something mystifying happened: life started to get sharply better—and it hasn’t stopped since.3
Nothing like that had ever happened. Before roughly 1800, the human experience was miserable. Nearly everyone was born in poverty, lived in poverty, and died in poverty.4 A large percentage died during childhood, and the average life expectancy hovered somewhere between 30 and 40 years.5 Even those who lived longer saw essentially no change in daily life between their youth and their death.
The most successful empires and civilizations failed to break free from this grim reality. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans built towering monuments and temples, while the ancient Chinese painted beautiful vases and created terra-cotta armies, but their accomplishments brought little change in the lives of the masses. At best, a couple of generations could expect modest improvements—perhaps a little more food or a little better shelter—only for this minor progress to disappear soon after.6
If you think of history as a chart of progress, then the overwhelming majority of the chart is a flat line, with only the tiniest bumps and dips along the way. But then that flat line turned into a hockey stick, suddenly curving and shooting upward.
After millennia of crushing poverty, more and more of humanity came into relative plenty. In 1800, the typical person earned today’s equivalent of $3 a day. Now they earn $33 a day—and in the United States, it’s $140 or more.7 Our standard of living is more than 4,000 percent higher than it was two centuries ago.
Worldwide, in the past 30 years, more than a billion people have risen out of extreme poverty, while the number who are undernourished has fallen by half, even as the population has risen by 50 percent.8 As the author Johan Norberg has shown, “Illiteracy, child labor and infant mortality rates are falling faster than at any other time in human history. Life expectancy at birth has increased more than twice as much in the last century as it did in the previous 200,000 years.”9
Behind the numbers are amazing creations and advances of every kind. We’ve cured diseases, powered the world with electricity, discovered ways to instantaneously communicate over the farthest distances, and created many other things that once would have been considered magic. Where since time immemorial men, women, and children had trudged on foot from the hut to the field and back again, we suddenly had carriages, then trains, then cars, then passenger planes, and now people are talking seriously about commercial space travel.
All told, we are healthier, wealthier, and happier than ever before, and we’re still advancing. The scholar Deirdre McCloskey calls it the “Great Enrichment”—I can think of no better term.
We now take it for granted, but we ought to ask: What happened?
The short answer is that, imperfectly, with many starts and stops, more people were empowered to realize their potential, enabling societal progress.
This is the essence of bottom up: people becoming what they could be.
Injustices were rolled back and barriers began to fall, allowing many more people to self-actualize and contribute. As people gained the opportunity to live as they saw fit (a process that was slow and uneven, and remains rife with injustice), they began to apply their unique abilities and knowledge to improve their lives and the lives of others. They solved problems that had bedeviled previous generations, devoted themselves to breaking barriers, and moved society forward through millions of everyday acts, some small, some large.
This is the essence of bottom up: people becoming what they could be.
The results were unlike anything ever seen.
Widespread individual self-actualization was essentially impossible before the late eighteenth century. Until that time, most everyone lived in societies that stifled people’s innate abilities. Such societies were usually either authoritarian or totalitarian. They were premised on control—the antithesis of empowerment. (The control mentality was evident not just in government but in religious organizations, business—see: guilds—and essentially everywhere.)
In authoritarian states, an individual or a group of elites holds power, without any limits on what they can do to their subjects. Unsurprisingly, they typically use their power to oppress the people, strengthen their rule, and enrich themselves. Individual flourishing is out of the question: the well-being of the tiny upper tier is their only real concern.
Totalitarian states are even worse. Their rulers seek to control all aspects of life—not only what people do but what they believe, think, and say. For example, in theocracies, the rulers tend to treat those who question their dogma as heretics, using torture and threat of death to force everyone to submit. The fires of the Spanish Inquisition claimed two types of victims: the many who lost their lives and the many more who, through fear, lost their ability to pursue their aspirations and develop their aptitudes.
Both authoritarian and totalitarian societies are based on control. Those at the top decide how society should be ordered and how people should live their lives. This crushes learning and initiative, causing the immiseration of virtually everyone. Every society based on control undermines progress by preventing individuals from discovering, developing, and applying their talents.
Such societies still exist today, but there aren’t nearly as many. That’s due to a series of developments that began to weaken the hold of the powerful few over the oppressed many. Control started to give way to liberation and empowerment.
THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
This took the convergence of a variety of events, changes that occurred and compounded over a long period of time. As these changes took hold, people of all kinds began to adjust their mind-sets—recognizing that the world was understandable, that no one had a monopoly on truth, that life could be improved, and that many more people could contribute, each in their own way.
The roots of this transformation stretch all the way back to the ancient world, but there were some key incidents that helped set the stage.
One of the first was Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440. The resulting availability of books allowed for the proliferation of literacy, giving a greater number of people the ability to learn and think for themselves. For the first time, people could discover firsthand that their rulers lacked justification. Not only that, they saw that their rulers were wrong about much else.
The printing press enabled Martin Luther to challenge religious doctrine and theocratic control in the first half of the sixteenth century. He preached what at the time was a radical egalitarianism, dignifying all productive work and offering a theory of individual empowerment. His ideas spread rapidly, partly because he had translated the Bible from Latin into German, which more people could read and understand.10
For this and other subversive acts, Luther was sentenced to death, beating the rap only by dying of natural causes.11 William Tyndale wasn’t so lucky. He was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English.12
Another key driver was the development of science and the scientific method. The two scientists who contributed most to this transformation were probably Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.
Galileo directly challenged the professors and priests who believed that everything worth knowing had been written long before. He said they only studied “a world on paper,” whereas he discovered the real world through his experiments.13
Among other things, he demonstrated that Aristotle’s theory that heavy objects fall faster than light ones was wrong. Even more important was when he proved that the sun—not the earth, as church dogma dictated—is at the center of the solar system. Galileo’s liberal, antiauthoritarian attitude helped destroy the myth that rulers were all-knowing.
Newton took science and the scientific method to the next level. His discoveries were key to moving the culture away from a closed mentality toward open inquiry, invention, and improvement. He also challenged aristocratic dominance, foreshadowing the recognition of individual rights. For his contributions, Newton has been called “one of the architects of our civil liberties.”14
These advances built on one another, hence Newton’s famous saying “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”15 His actions, like those of Galileo, Luther, Gutenberg, and many others, didn’t (and couldn’t) happen in a vacuum. Each one opened the door to other discoveries and developments—whether spiritual, scientific, social, economic, or otherwise. The application of those discoveries enabled further advances by contemporaries as well as later generations.
But the Great Enrichment wasn’t driven solely by these rare, brilliant minds. If it was, then it would have started earlier—perhaps in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Their work was necessary, but not sufficient. What was also needed was for people of all kinds—supposedly regular and “common” people—to get in on the action. The cycle that started with a few scientists, philosophers, and theologians had to expand to encompass the rest of us.
Which brings us to Holland.
After the Dutch escaped from Spanish rule in the early seventeenth century, they entered a golden age during which they were the freest, most creative, and wealthiest people in the world. This happened for a specific reason, heralding a societal revolution.16
Unlike virtually every other nation on Earth, Holland let a relatively large number of its citizens live their lives as they saw fit. It practiced religious tolerance and respected intellectual differences while refraining from some of the worst discrimination against women, Jews, and other historically disenfranchised groups. This attracted dissidents from other countries, such as John Locke and René Descartes, who, together with native-born thinkers like Baruch Spinoza, advanced concepts like property rights, free speech, religious liberty, scientific inquiry, and trade.
These concepts were more than just ethereal ideas. The acceptance of property rights gave people of all kinds the confidence to work and save and make improvements. The acceptance of free speech and religious liberty allowed people to offer new ideas and interpretations, fostering intellectual development. Free trade enabled the Dutch to benefit from goods and ideas from all over the world and find new markets for their own. Scientific inquiry stimulated technological advances in a host of industries and fields.
All these changes led to meaningful improvements in people’s lives. Merchants, artisans, scientists, philosophers, and workmen were allowed to pursue their interests without being punished. And so they kept trying, kept improving, kept positing, kept painting, kept innovating, and kept advancing wherever possible. This led to more livable cities, better health, and more educational and employment opportunities for those who had been excluded.
MEETING MY MATCH
NO ONE HAS CHANGED my life more than my wife, Liz. She is everything I’m not, and everything I need. Being so different has enabled each of us to learn from the other, and I believe we are both much better for it. I find her even more captivating now than when we were dating.
Our paths first crossed in the late 1960s. It was at a party—a very brief encounter sometime before we started dating. I remember thinking, “Too bad she’s involved with someone else.” She radiated a magnetic force that drew everyone to her, including me.
So when I learned she was free from that relationship, I immediately called her for a date. It was apparent from the beginning that she was unlike anyone I’d ever met. The more I got to know her, the more taken I was.
Liz grew up in a family with an old-world Italian culture in which girls were to focus on being attractive, developing social graces, then getting married and raising children. As someone who was steeped in principles, including Maslow’s mandate that “what one can be, one must be,” I thought she could be so much more.
Some of her gifts were already apparent: her world-class people skills and her style. She was rising fast in her career in fashion, working as a buyer for women’s separates at a local department store—a prestigious position for a 22-year-old. And she was an amazingly quick study on most everything.
She had never tried sports, whereas I was into skiing, tennis, and running. At first she hated them all, especially skiing. She was delighted when my knees gave out and we stopped going.
Tennis grew on her when our son, Chase, started playing. She now loves it, playing every day, and is still winning tournaments.
Not too long ago, I ran into a tennis friend of Liz’s at the gym who complimented us on how well we had danced together at a party the previous Saturday night. I corrected her—Liz dances well, I don’t. I only look good when Liz leads. Her retort was, “Yes, Liz leads us all.” When I told Liz, she laughed and said, “That was not a compliment.”
Liz and I met in the late 1960s. I knew she was special from the moment I met her.
We’ve been together for more than 50 years.
But it’s not just dancing and tennis. And it’s not just me. Liz has developed her extraordinary people skills such that she leads everybody, and I mean everybody, without fear. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen successful, famous people sit still for some needed Liz logic.
And why? Because they knew she was right, and later told me so. Everyone who knows her regularly seeks her counsel, including our children, as did my mother when she was alive.
I give part of the credit to the principles I was encouraging her to learn that were transforming my life. At first, she considered that too heavy a burden. Then, as she witnessed the principles helping me, she began applying them herself and saw that they aided her as well.
I’m so grateful she did, as she uses the principles daily to support me. For example, years ago she cured me of using cocktail parties to hone my ability to apply and debate them, which wasn’t making me any friends. And over the years, she has improved my ability to communicate their benefits by encouraging me to use more stories.
More than 50 years later, I can say unreservedly: Liz has transformed my life. She has always compensated for my flaws and has been a tremendous source of joy.
No wonder I love her still. But why does she love me? I asked her. Her answer was classic Liz. She told me that in the beginning, “it wasn’t exactly fireworks.” Instead, it was because she had never met anyone like me, “someone who was so dedicated to his cause, to his North Star. Someone who invariably did what he said he would, who so faithfully lived up to his commitments.”
We love each other even more today than when we fell in love. And that’s because we have dedicated ourselves to helping each other become what we are capable of being.
— CHARLES KOCH
This is not to say that the Holland of 1690 was without tragic flaws. Dutch society was still riven with injustices and mistreatment of individuals and ethnic groups. Despicably, it followed suit with nearly every other nation at the time and allowed slavery. The lost human potential from that injustice is incalculable. While Holland showed what even a small increase in liberty and justice can do, especially compared to the other countries of that era, we cannot look to it as an ideal model.
Despite its injustices, though, the Dutch experience gave a glimpse of what’s possible. If Holland could thrive by only partially implementing principles such as equal rights, openness, individual liberty, global trade, and scientific inquiry, then countries that more fully practiced such principles could do even better and go farther and faster.
Which is exactly what happened. The ideas that transformed Holland made their way to England in about 1700, then to Scotland, and on to parts of France, Belgium, and Germany. Those ideas also found their way to the New World—to 13 colonies on the North Atlantic coast.
Those colonies then did what no other nation had done to date: founded a new country, the United States of America, dedicated to the proposition that all people “are created equal” and possess “certain inalienable rights,” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
A NEW COUNTRY, A NEW VISION
In these simple, elegant words, human history was turned upside down. America articulated a vision unlike anything that had come before.
It’s hard to overstate how seismic this shift really was. Where once all societies had been divided between the few rulers and the many ruled, now there was a nation that said, in principle, no such distinction exists. Of course, America inexcusably and widely violated this principle from the start through slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, restrictions on women, and many other egregious injustices. (I will expand on this shortly.)
Unlike any other nation, however, America had established a standard that made these injustices obvious and abhorrent. That standard, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, ultimately empowered those who would break so many barriers over the next two-hundred-plus years. It opened opportunities for the Social Entrepreneurs who went on to help millions more contribute.
The economist-historian-philosopher Friedrich Hayek perhaps best captured this transformation in his quote at the beginning of this chapter. The “greatest discovery mankind ever made” refers to a system of equal rights. Prior to this discovery, societies were ordered on the assumption that control was essential to communal stability—that society had to make a choice between the harmony of the community and the autonomy of the individual.
But this was (and is) a false choice. In a system of equal rights, empowered people realize that helping others is the way to help themselves. As equal rights spread, so did empowerment.
The result was the Great Enrichment.
As more people began to discover, develop, and apply their abilities, they improved the world around them and found fulfillment in their own lives. They combined their ideas with the best ideas of others, creating something greater still. This has always been the story of material advances, from the wheel to the automobile to the airplane. That it took us so long to get from the wheel to the automobile, but not from the automobile to the airplane, is a testament to the progress that’s possible. When more people are engaged, the result is much more progress, much more quickly.
The dizzying speed of progress over the past two centuries was directed by no one and predicted by no one. The opposite is true: it often came from the most unlikely places. People who would have previously been considered ordinary could act on their ideas, and it turned out they could do extraordinary things. A pair of bicycle mechanics with little formal education invented the airplane. A college dropout founded the company that led the digital revolution. Other examples are everywhere.
This points to a profound lesson, one that seems obvious in retrospect: all of us are smarter than each of us.
We are all better off when we add our voices to the larger conversation. We all benefit when each person has the chance to make their mark on society. When we transform ourselves, we simultaneously help transform the world around us.
PROMISES BROKEN
The progress of the past two centuries is nothing short of breathtaking, yet the story is not one of all progress and no pain.
The extent to which we have followed the principles of the Declaration of Independence has made the United States the most successful country in the world. Sadly, America has also violated its principles in appalling ways. For many people, the promise of equal rights has been denied in whole or in part, thereby limiting—or eliminating—their ability to apply themselves and contribute. The consequences of these violations continue to haunt us today.
Slavery is the most horrific example. For nearly a century after the Declaration was signed, millions of African Americans toiled in degrading, dehumanizing conditions. Fathers, mothers, and children were considered property, and as such, were bought and sold, separated, beaten, and worse.
After slavery’s abolition, segregation, violence, and racism prevented many African Americans from fully participating in American life. Racism still shackles people—and limits our country.
Native Americans faced many injustices as well. Like African Americans, their rights and humanity were also denied. Most were stripped of their land and driven from their homes. Many were victims of organized violence and even genocide, as expansionist settlers, military officers, and politicians sought to eradicate Native American culture and Native Americans themselves. A continuing system of control and dependency has led to a legacy of struggling individuals and communities in many areas today.
Injustice also marred the treatment of women. At the Founding, women were excluded from full participation in society. For decades, women were prohibited from attending college or defending their rights and, when married, from controlling their own property. For more than a century, they couldn’t vote. Unjust expectations rooted in this history and culture continue to hold women back.
Throughout American history, there have been many other grave injustices, targeting religious and sexual minorities, immigrants, and others. They are all destructive, and wrong for at least two reasons.
The first and most important is the profound harm to the individual. When people are denied their rights, they have less opportunity to discover and apply their abilities. Every person deserves the chance to find fulfillment, meaning, and personal success—to self-actualize. One of the great tragedies in life is being denied the opportunity to become all you can be.
The second reason is the harm to society. When people are prevented from realizing their potential, we are all poorer for it, and not just materially.
The Great Enrichment happened because more and more people were allowed to contribute. Each such person added to the advances of the last two hundred years. Every time someone was excluded—for whatever reason—it subtracted from our possible achievements. Just as our progress was unimaginable to previous generations, where we could have been right now is unimaginable to us.
This puts in perspective the injustices of our time. Many have been around since before America’s Founding.
In subsequent chapters, I will more fully explore many other modern-day injustices. They include corporate welfare, protectionism, and a broken criminal justice system, among many other wrongs. The first two rig the economy in favor of the well-connected and especially harm the least fortunate, preventing them from contributing. The last—the criminal justice system—disproportionately holds back those with little or nothing. While they are in no way equivalent to the much more egregious and obvious harms of slavery or abuse of Native Americans, they nonetheless stifle people’s ability to find fulfillment and to contribute, undercutting social progress. Just as previous generations have removed the most pernicious violations, it is up to us to remove those that persist today.
The Great Enrichment will remain unfinished so long as even one person continues to be sidelined.
There is another important similarity between the injustices of the past and those of today: their defenders say the system can’t be changed, so we shouldn’t try.
At our nation’s Founding, no less than Thomas Jefferson declared that slavery simply couldn’t be eliminated. The author of the Declaration of Independence himself wrote, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”17 It wasn’t that Jefferson didn’t understand the evil of slavery. He did, as shown by his statement, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”18 Instead, as was prevalent at the time, he was blind to the potential of those who suffered the horrors of slavery.
RAISING OUR KIDS
LIZ AND I HAVE BEEN blessed to have two amazing children, Elizabeth and Chase. Starting when they were very young, I wanted to help them transform their lives using the principles that were transforming my own. I was so passionate about it that I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night filled with emotion about wanting to pour everything I had into empowering them.
Which is exactly what I tried to do. In their early years, I especially focused on helping them discover their unique gifts through trial and error. My approach was much stronger on the error side, making it extra difficult for our children.
The first real talent Elizabeth revealed was at summer camp in Missouri as a preteenager. One of the activities at graduation was a race. Liz and I were amazed—Elizabeth didn’t just win it, she blew the others away. Afterward, I got her to join a local junior track team, the Shocker Striders, which provided training and coaching, and got the kids to meets throughout the state.
Wanting to ensure that this experiment succeeded and helped Elizabeth increase her confidence, I provided additional training and coaching on the side. (My usual tendency is to overdo, e.g., 5 a.m. runs on family vacation, wind sprints in a blizzard on Christmas Eve.) I also went with her to every weekend meet. She developed rapidly, winning second in the state championship in both the one- and two-mile races after just a couple of years.
But when Elizabeth became a teenager, her performance began to slip. To see what was wrong, I watched one of her training sessions, and the problem was obvious. She wasn’t giving her all.
When I confronted her, she said she no longer wanted to do track. I said that’s fine, but you need to do something to which you will give 100 percent. She had totally accepted the idea that to be happy, you have to discover your gifts, fully develop them, and apply them constructively.
She said, “Look, Pop, I’m a bohemian. I do not enjoy athletic competition. I’m passionate about writing and painting.” I said, “So you’re going to push yourself as hard at writing and painting as I pushed you in track?” She said, “Absolutely.” She was true to her word. She became as committed as possible to applying all of herself to everything she did. She won national painting and writing awards. She was also one of the top students in her class. But it didn’t make her happy.
We worked hard to help our children discover their own unique paths. After a lot of trial and error, Chase now leads Koch’s investments in transformational technology. (Africa, 1985)
Elizabeth is devoting her life to helping others find their way, as she did. In 1984, we were having fun at our home in Wichita.
Our family on a fishing trip in Alaska in 1986.
When our kids were young, I’d wake up in the middle of the night filled with emotion about wanting to pour everything I had into empowering them. (Father’s Day, Wichita, 1984)
In fact, the harder she worked, the less happy she was becoming. She tells me the reason for this was that her extreme industry wasn’t driven by curiosity or the desire to grow but by an unconscious desire to “earn” all the privilege she was born with. She kept thinking that each paper or work project would be the magic ticket to self-confidence and respect, but none were. It took many years before she realized that she had missed part of the puzzle—all that industry would not be fulfilling until it was attached to a North Star.
Thankfully, she discovered hers. Central to that was founding an organization called Unlikely Collaborators in which she uses her story of being lost, combined with a wide range of therapeutic tools and introspective practices, to help others transcend limiting beliefs and find their own unique way, as she did.
Chase’s path was quite different but also involved trial and error and being lost for a lengthy period. Chase demonstrated good coordination at an early age, and since I was into tennis then, we got him into a tennis program.
He developed quickly, doing well in Kansas District and qualifying for Missouri Valley regional competition in his age group. In the 12-year-old category, he made the national championship tournament in San Diego, performing well enough to be ranked in the top 100. He and his superstar teammate Matt Wright did so well over four years of high school that they were written up in Sports Illustrated.
After several more years of a life consumed by tennis, Chase’s performance began to slip. Liz tried to encourage him, but at a Missouri Valley tournament in Kansas City, it was obvious it was all over. He threw both of his matches in a double-elimination tournament to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Liz’s seventieth. Our family is fortunate to still be close after all these years.
When they got home, Liz had me talk to him. I told him he could quit tennis but that he would need to do something else to which he would give his all. He immediately said, “I’d rather have a job.”
I think he believed he could get an easy job in Wichita, allowing him to party with his friends. So he was surprised when the manager of our feedlot in Syracuse, Kansas, pulled up in a pickup the next day to take him to his new job.
Chase spent the next six weeks sleeping on a couch in his manager’s trailer, working 13 hours a day, 7 days a week, shoveling manure, treating sick animals, and repairing facilities. He made friends with all of his coworkers, who didn’t exactly share his background.
Chase came back feeling better about himself than he ever had. He was transformed, as he could see he was capable of much more than he had ever imagined. He spent the rest of his summers doing tough jobs at company facilities throughout the country. Upon graduation, he worked at another company in Austin, Texas, for a couple of years before joining Koch Industries.
After 11 years with us, in many roles, Chase was named president of Koch Fertilizer. That only lasted a year before he fired himself, taking a lesser position. He believed he wasn’t the right person for the role, that others could do a better job.
Three years later, in 2017, pursuing his North Star, he founded Koch Disruptive Technologies to acquire cutting-edge innovations that would enable Koch Industries to better serve customers, employees, and society. I’m happy to say that both Chase and KDT are off and running.
Liz and I are so grateful for our two children. They have taught us much about how we’re all unique and how we all need to find our own best path. Discovering that path is never easy, but it’s worth the struggle.
— CHARLES KOCH
Jefferson and those like him, who had such a strong belief in some people, simply could not bring themselves to believe in all people. This view, that certain groups lack innate worth or ability, is at the root of so many other injustices throughout history, many of which I’ll describe.
Gratefully, other Social Entrepreneurs have had the courage of their convictions, from Gutenberg to Luther, Galileo to Newton, Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr., and all the pioneers who opened the door to the progress of the past two centuries. It’s also true for the billions of others who contributed by applying their own gifts to do what was right. As I was learning, no barrier is too big to break, so long as principled people have the courage to take it on.
APPLYING THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
My studies exposed me to the wonders of individual empowerment. It and the other principles I was learning consumed me to such an extent that I wasn’t satisfied with simply understanding them intellectually. I felt compelled to apply them in every facet of my life. Doing so, I believed, would enable me to achieve much more and have greater fulfillment than I ever would have otherwise.
I didn’t think of myself as a Social Entrepreneur at the time—certainly not in those words—but I definitely wanted to share what I was learning so others could benefit as I did. From my experience, history, and other studies, I could see a future of boundless possibility.
I see it still. The Great Enrichment will remain unfinished so long as even one person continues to be sidelined. If we can empower everyone to contribute and realize their potential, there will be no limit to what our country can become. The progress of the past is nothing compared to the promise of the future.
As you will see, this was about to be demonstrated in the transformation of the family business, Koch Industries.