There’s a theory known as Occam’s Razor, which states that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

The usual interpretation of this phrase is that the simplest solution is most often the correct one. This is not to say that the least number of words makes for success, or that a correct theory must be as inelegant as possible– far from it.

The Razor simply means that one should not assume that the bookstore does not have your book because an international conspiracy wanted you to fail your class, when in reality it was simply an unchecked box on an order form.

We apply this theory to conspiracy theories– “the government is hiding aliens at Area 51,” the air force is testing secret war planes in the Nevada desert — beyond necessity.

However, an Aug. 30, 2010 article in The New Yorker entitled “Cover Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama” revealed an actual, ongoing effort by two brothers – David and Charles Koch, owners of the massive Koch Industries conglomerate – to do anything necessary to push what has become an ultra-libertarian, ultra-pro big business agenda all over the country.

I’ll spare you the gory details (although you should definitely check out the article*), but essentially these two brothers are funneling their massive wealth into just about every ultra-right wing/ultra-libertarian cause they can see fit to fund.

When they reached campaign donation limits, they found political action committees to further their efforts. In short, they are, as the subhead to the article says, “waging a war against Obama” and, indeed, all that is left wing.

I don’t bring this up because I want to be alarmist; it is not surprising that massive corporations would support ideologies that help their bottom line. I bring this up because I want to demonstrate the results of what misdirected self-interest does to a nation’s politics.

The Koch brothers are using their influence to control the conversation in America. They do so in ways not necessarily in the interest of bettering society. Supporting Tea Party politicians, various lunatic fringe right-wing organizations and the like only makes our political discourse worse.

The Kochs are paying to further the descent of our political language into nothing more than a shouting match, when they could be using their money to support people who advocate reasonable discussion. It might seem hard to believe, but there must be Republicans/Libertarians somewhere who want to have reasoned discourse, only they can’t get any money (probably for that same reason) and so they would never be elected.

When the right supports these unreasonable people, the left, fearing an election loss, slides further and further right.

Simply having more money does not make a nation better, especially if the people with more money pay fewer taxes.

The Koch brothers feel that it is in their own self-interest to harm the nation by turning politics into a shouting match, and it is, but only if you interpret self interest to mean “getting me more wealth.”

The Koch Corporation will be made richer the further into the right, the further into deregulation the country gets. But the rest of us will, to put it bluntly, be screwed. Up the river.

Playing in traffic. We won’t have the taxes to pay for better anything, and the corporations who are supposed to take over public works projects for the government will be allowed to do shoddy work and improve again their bottom line.

So why are the Kochs so scary? Because they can actually make serious profit by worsening our country. The lower our standard of living gets, the more money they can make. Corporate power at the expense of the average human.

A capitalist version of the communist (not socialist! There is a difference!) ideology: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

*http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer