Libertarian Cornerstone: Cato Institute
The Cato Institute was founded “to originate, disseminate, and advance solutions based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.” For co-founder Charles Koch, Cato became a cornerstone in a network of think tanks and academic centers that he’s funded in the last four decades to promote those goals.
Among Koch’s other more prominent network investments: the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center, both organizations started by others that eventually received majority funding from the Koch family foundations and moved to the George Mason University campus in northern Virginia in the mid-1980s.
In one of its first policy publications, Cato advocated for privatizing social security, which would be a significant step toward the limited government to which it aspired. The Mercatus Center supplied the George W. Bush administration with 14 of the 23 government regulations that it targeted for elimination or modification in 2001. The Institute for Humane Studies seeks to assist “policy entrepreneurs” in finding their most effective path in implementing social change, be it via a think tank, politics, academia, or in business.
