In many ways, George Byron Koch’s life reads like a textbook American success story. At 12, he launched an electronics company for hobbyists with his younger brother. Later, he spot-welded on an automotive assembly line, painted street addresses on curbs, and worked the graveyard shift at a hospital. He built a career as an audio engineer in the music and film industries and has founded two companies—an educational toy business and a software firm. Eventually, he was recruited by Oracle to be senior vice president of the international Applications Division.
It’s the kind of résumé often cited as proof that grit and hard work are all it takes to succeed.
Koch, now a pastor and advocate for mutual care, doesn’t see it that way. His new book, Bullies, Parasites and Slaves: Replacing Exploitation with Mutual Care (Byron Arts, out now), is a penetrating look at how societies work against the very people whose labor sustains them.
“I’ve often heard well-meaning middle- and upper-class people opine that the poor can pull themselves out of poverty with hard work and determination,” Koch says. “They literally do not comprehend how a person can be stuck, bound, imprisoned by poverty. They don’t realize that the rules of the game are very different when you are poor.”
He points to a typical supermarket employee. She earns $15 an hour but is limited to 30 hours a week so her employer can avoid paying benefits. “The CEO of that same company makes literally $8,000 per hour, with excellent healthcare and extraordinary benefits,” Koch says. “Let’s be very plain: This is wrong. It is morally detestable, and no amount of handwaving about the miracle of capitalism can justify it. We have extraordinary abundance, and we can afford to pay a living wage. Capitalism can function with a moral backbone and a beating heart.”
The “bullies” and “parasites” of the book’s title exploit this imbalance. “They rob ordinary folks of their work, time, health and lives,” Koch says. “They make them ‘slaves’ by ruthlessly underpaying them. The ordinary workers end up subsidizing the power and wealth of those bullies and parasites ‘above’ them.”
Meanwhile, organizations providing mutual care—food banks, shelters, and the like—work to fill in the gaps. “They exist because our society fails to care for everyone’s basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, health, education, liberty, safety,” Koch says. “Some get far more than they need while others struggle to maintain the basics. Sadly, the distinction is seldom willingness to work, but rather where you were born, what color you are, or how much money your parents had.”
The book’s themes trace back to Koch’s early work in the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, he convinced his pastor to host a Black inner-city organizer to speak to their all-white suburban church about job training. “I thought everyone would be excited to learn about the economic progress being made for poor families,” he says. “The invitation split the church—half of the members voted to leave the church if he was allowed in the building. The rage stunned me. I knew then how serious a problem racism was, and I couldn’t walk away.”
Koch finished Bullies, Parasites and Slaves in late 2024, and says it is neither a defense nor an indictment of any political party. “Now the book sounds like I wrote it last week, because its message seems so pointed and relevant to our current political scene,” he says. But, he says, the injustices are centuries old, a history detailed in the book.
“Now we have so much abundance we can actually move past it, help everyone thrive and prosper, if we just decide to do it,” Koch says. “Mutual care is wise, and logical and productive. The book illustrates the steps needed to make that a reality. Let’s do it.”
