Update: My response to the 2023 New York Times profile of Elizabeth Koch can be found here.
So Elizabeth Koch is the daughter of the CEO of Koch Industries Charles Koch and really is not known for being in the tabloids or news. I find this interesting considering how often we hear about other kids of billionaires who sometimes get drunk, blow through trust funds, and lead wild and interesting lives. While reading Sons of Wichita I stumbled upon an interesting quote from Elizabeth Koch about her views on money, dating, sex, and even how she views herself. Actually I looked to see where the source of the quote was from and it was from a series of articles that Elizabeth ad published in the mid 2000's on Memoirville. Some of the articles are no longer online and I had to use the Internet Wayback Machine (which is an archive for the internet).
So I stumbled upon something that Elizabeth Koch had written back in 2006. It really is interesting, enlightening, dark, funny, and somewhat sweet/sad at the same time. Back in 2006 (Elizabeth would have be roughly in her early 30's she was dating a guy named Todd Zuniga (they even published a book together which is available on Amazon here). At the time Todd is the founding editor and President of Opium magazine. Elizabeth worked as an executive editor at Opium. He is also the co-creator with Elizabeth of Literary Death Match (were people read their work for 7 minutes or less and then judges decide who had the best material).
So apparently Elizabeth and her boyfriend Todd planned a travel trip that would serve as a compatibility test to see whether or not their relationship would last. Elizabeth moved in with Todd in San Francisco. During this Elizabeth and Todd were running a around the world seeing various places just two months after meeting. During the trip they went to Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing. During the trip it is apparent that Todd and Elizabeth are constantly arguing but in some rare moments show compassion and love towards each other.
When reading the articles it is clear that Elizabeth great at writing fiction (I personally am more of a non-fiction reader but found her writing very interesting and it very clear an concise). During the trip Elizabeth takes an introspective view of herself and her relationship with Todd. After losing Todd for a few hours Elizabeth comments, "I cannot go back to panic attacks and meltdowns and doctors and pharmaceuticals and terrifying my parents and staring down that dark well of nothing you do will ever be good enough you privileged waste of flesh". Elizabeth admits to having a "mental illness period" and taking drugs to help and is over it. What is interesting is that Elizabeth is pretty self aware of who she is a person. She describes herself as a "pinwheel of anxiety, a black cough of misery, critical and disgruntled to the extreme". I can't even imagine what it would be like to have Koch after your name.
Upon arriving in Tokyo (tired and hung over) and spending $40 for a cab they find a place that seems run down and not well maintained. So after realizing this they take a cab and book a room at the five star Park Hyatt (one of the more expensive hotels in Tokyo). Currently as I write this post rooms for Park Hyatt are roughly $560 (after converting back to American dollars). Elizabeth has an interesting quote when talking about staying at the hotel saying "I realize that I'm not one to judge rich people who walk around depressed and semi-suicidal for no apparent reason. Nor am I one to judge rich people who hemorrhage money when their surroundings fail them, as much as I detest that sort of person, for that's precisely what I'm about to do". What is ironic is when pulling up to the hotel Elizabeth feels guilty and almost sick. Elizabeth goes on to say that she knows that her boyfriend Todd is aware of her views on money saying "Todd is fully aware of my disturbed and convoluted relationship with money...I do not toss money around like garden fertilizer, especially not in places where anyone is likely to see me. I want people to like me, and as a small child growing up in a small town, I learned that having money makes people sort of hate you on the spot, so for most of my life I've invested great amounts of creative energy into pretending I don't have any". Elizabeth goes on to talk about being thrifty saying that she prefers "moth-eaten sweaters and flea market jeans", rarely does she wear make up, and her mother (Elizabeth Koch-yes this can get confusing) disapproves that her daughter is "poor-boying it". The daughter feels like she has to spend money to get approval from her mother. Elizabeth admits when it comes to buying items she doesn't like to haggle (compared to her father Charles Koch who will take the hyphen in a 50-50 deal).
Todd and Elizabeth get into a fight over headphones that Todd needs after his headphones are broken. Elizabeth offers to buy the $200 headphones for Todd but then feels bad and doesn't want to deny him something because she knows she has been a pill to deal with. This makes Elizabeth think back to 6th grade when girls on the playground called her "rich bitch" because her last name was Koch.
Speaking of approval Todd went to visit the Koch family for a weekend in April 2006. During dinner Elizabeth felt that she had to justify her accomplishments in the form of a PowerPoint presentation to avoid questions from Charles Koch (her father) like "Are you sure you are busy enough?".You have to remember Charles Koch worked around the clock for many decades (even on Saturdays and holidays) trying to build and grow Koch Industries. During the trip Elizabeth opines about her work history and between 1996-2006 she quit five jobs in publishing and writing, did freelance publishing for 6 months, thought about a quasi memoir (I would have been the first one to buy that book!).The remainder of the weekend Elizabeth was showing her father (Charles) articles about corn subsidies (to prove to her father that she was curious). Although Charles would be proud of his daughter when she observes a hotel and a large train station in Kyoto together which seems to be creating issues that "this is a perfect example of the clusterfuck of misery from central planning". Well I guess those Sunday economic lessons with father Charles Koch paid off.
Elizabeth has a dark view of the world saying that she will kick people out of her life who make her feel uncomfortable, until there is no one left to kick out but her. During the whole trip Elizabeth seems bored, anxious, depressed, and irritable. One morning (they both wake up late) and Todd is interested in having sex and Elizabeth wants to feel some type of connection so they have sex and after sex Elizabeth starts to cry and comments that "For the record sex has never made me feel closer to anyone. Sex has always made me feel like a mutant". Todd also expects to have sex in every country too and when Todd tries to make an advance after they have a fight Elizabeth says he "fucked that one up". On the third date with Todd Elizabeth said that Todd was narcissistic and egotistical and thought that all of these traits would be part of his downfall. Elizabeth says " I want my boyfriend to be strong and confident, and when behaving badly, to verbally knock me around a little".
During her entries Elizabeth does have some funny comments saying if she goes to bed hung over and stuffed (with food) she doesn't want to be touched. Elizabeth has interesting taste when it comes to food as she likes to dunk candy into hard liquor. During the trip Elizabeth gets her mother (Liz Koch) a long bill cap because she knows her mother is out in the sun six days a week paying tennis despite having skin disease.
These journal entries give a rare view into the world of Elizabeth Koch. For some reason there is some mystique about her since she is smart, dark, complicated, irritable, yet can be caring at times. What I find interesting is how much detail she has in the entries she posted. She appears to have a very good memory and is able to remember the slightest detail during their trip.
These days Elizabeth live in New York and in 2010 founded Black Balloon Publishing (which publishes the unusual, odd, and quirky pieces of work) and continues to run it. Actually her father published a book on Market Based Management (currently he is working on a second book "Good Profit"), Harry Koch (grandfather of Charles Koch) was in the publishing business. It appears the Koch family does have a literary gene.
The future should be interesting as Elizabeth Koch will most likely inherit Koch Industries stock in some form or fashion. The question is will there be a battle with her younger brother Chase Koch (who is now President of Koch Argonomic Services) over the direction of the company which could lead to the lawsuits and legal battles between Charles, David, Bill, and Fredrick. Not only will Chase and Elizabeth be likely shareholders of Koch Industries stock but in addition to this David Koch said in this interview that most of his net worth is in Koch Industries stock and his children (David Koch Jr., John Mark Koch, and Mary Julia Koch) will inherit the stock. So between these five children will own about 84% of Koch Industries stock with the remaining 16% held by the Marshall family. This could lead to an interesting situation where the family has to offer multi-billion dollar buyouts to relatives if certain family members simply just want to cash out. I would be interested to see how Elizabeth Koch will respond to this. Will she continue to be a publisher and writer or will she change her mind once she sees how much Koch Industries pays in dividends and begin living a different life style? I personally could see her inherited billions and continue to publish and write and continue to do with what makes her happy. Her writings show a very complicated, guilty, and almost torturous relationship with money. However, it will be interesting if the money will make her have feeling of guilt and anxiety. After doing this research on Elizabeth Koch I truly find her the most fascinating Koch of all.
Very insightful. As somebody who has been more than a casual observer of the family for the past 30 years, I think your instincts on Elizabeth's character are dead on.
ReplyDeleteShe is an amazingly warm and intelligent person. People should stop judging what they don't know. You say poor little rich kid, but can you imagine going to public school when your dad is the boss of most of the kids parents? Money can make life easier in ways but much more complicated in others. I sat down with her years ago and had a conversation, unfortunately I has just had a breakup and was a mess and was probably terrible insane company. Give my left arm for another night talking to Ellesbet. I don't know if i've ever met a woman with as much self awareness and just amazing intelligence.
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ReplyDeleteI met Elizabeth on several occasions in Los Angeles without knowing her last name or who she was. She had written something and read it aloud to a bunch of people. it was funny, poignant and well written. I went up to her and told her how moved I was by what she wrote and read. Elizabeth is very likeable, intelligent and funny. She just happens to belong to one of the wealthiest families in this country which is not such an easy role to live. She never complained or used the ‘woe is me’ theme. I actually felt sad for her but, I liked her. Elizabeth is a good person.(I detest her father and the late David).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! She does write incredibly well and my causal observations from afar confirm your views as well. I agree with you she has never wanted to be in the spotlight and tries to remain as low key as possible given how much spotlight is placed on the family.
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ReplyDeletehow are you all respecting her in any capacity? She's obsessed with making people like her, doesn't understand why they don't (it's not the wealth per se, it's how it was acquired and what it's used for), she's created a make-work job for herself through a spectacularly vacuous company that's the smallest of rebrandings of surface level Freudian ideas from decades ago, and does absolutely nothing with her immense wealth and power to address the exploitation and social harms created by that wealth accumulation and the purposes its used for nor has she added any real value to society at all. She's a quintessentially out of touch, self-obsessed, vacuous billionaire child that fully deserves every bit of negative attention she gets. It's deeply embarassing how readily everyone seems to completely uncritically accept her positive marketing and ignore her position and inaction within systems of deeply socially harmful power structures built on some of the most straightforwardly-exploitative, extractive, literally-planet-destroying capital accumulation in contemporary neoliberal society.
ReplyDeleteShe sits within a dynasty that represents one of the most singularly existential threats to humanity and spends her immense resources and power promoting her "idea" of perception boxes driven purely by her need for people to like her despite the horrors her family represents rather than doing anything at all to address this root cause behind the understandable and wide-spread disgust she accurately perceives from most normal people because of what she represents
Thanks for your comment. The purpose of the post that I wrote almost 7 years ago now was to shed light on journal posts written by Elizabeth. Given she rarely makes public statements/comments my goal was to uncover more of who she (given not much at the time was known about her).
ReplyDeleteMy belief is her comment for making people like her stems from a deep insecurity from growing up within the Koch family. She has always appeared to be hippy-dippy so I am not sure I would agree with your "self-obsessed", vacuous billionaire child" comment. To me this should be reserved for those kiddos that are trying to be "influencers".
Your comment regarding the dynasty is interesting given that company makes toilet paper many people use, David Koch was in charge of a company that literally made water cleaner (go check it out if you don't believe me), and the company also makes pollution control equipment (this all is planet destroying I suppose).
Also it isn't clear how much wealth she personally has. There seems to be an assumption since her father has it therefore she does which is somewhat flawed logic. Also I can't see Charles Koch leaving Koch Industries stock to someone who has never worked at Koch Industries in their entire life. However, I would grant some gifting has been made to help her philanthropic efforts.
I think Elizabeth is a complex person given her history of battling depression and mental illness and should be respected for coming out with this and trying to improve society with her different efforts (will they work-who knows?) but I would rather see someone trying to make a positive impact on society compared to someone that blows millions of dollars on drugs, alcohol, and other destructive things.
It sounds well grounded and apparently has a is interesting to read the comments about Elizabeth. She apparently has a problem with her money she will inherit.I find it interesting of the negativity towards her father. It always amazes me how envious people can be. When a person like Charles Koch creates as many jobs as he has you should be impressed by what he has accomplished. It really amazes me how critical people are generally about wealth. There is no other country in the world where you can really
ReplyDeletebecome wealthy and make your dreams come true. Maybe complaining people should travel to some of these left leaning countries and maybe just move there if you don't like it. This is by far the best country in the world.
“Creates jobs.” Get the fuck out of here, man. I’m old enough to have visited a few Communist countries in the Cold War era, know Elizabeth personally if not well, and I promise you would never be jealous of someone on behalf of inherited wealth, given that I come from a degree of it myself. Charles Koch has “created jobs,” alright: he’s created the job of reversing the almost unimaginable damage he’s inflicted on the country and the planet. His children should wander the earth in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of their days, and when Charles is lowered into the ground at last, I will drive to that location to piss on it
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