Cato Institute Founded by Charles Koch - Libertarian Policy Infrastructure

In 1977, Charles Koch (chairman and CEO of Koch Industries), Ed Crane, and Murray Rothbard founded the Cato Institute, establishing a libertarian think tank that would become central to promoting deregulation, privatization, and reduced government oversight across all sectors of American society.

Charles Koch provided the entirety of Cato’s funding for its first few years, helping the organization get off the ground. A Cato spokesperson later claimed the Koch family provided 10% of all the Institute’s funding from its founding until 2012, though this understates Charles Koch’s central role in establishing and directing the institution.

Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs including: lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve system and the Affordable Care Act, privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service, demilitarization of police, open borders, and non-interventionist foreign policy.

The founding of Cato represented Charles Koch’s entry into systematic policy infrastructure building, paralleling the conservative religious and neoconservative infrastructure being built simultaneously through Heritage Foundation, AEI, and other Powell Memo institutions. While Cato positioned itself as libertarian rather than conservative, its deregulation and privatization advocacy aligned perfectly with corporate interests seeking to eliminate government oversight.

Cato’s libertarian framing provided intellectual cover for policies that benefited large corporations and wealthy individuals by portraying government regulation as infringement on individual liberty rather than necessary protection of public interest. The institute’s work on privatizing Social Security, eliminating environmental regulations, and reducing corporate taxation advanced Koch Industries’ business interests while claiming to defend abstract principles of freedom.

The establishment of Cato in 1977 demonstrated how the Powell Memo vision was being implemented across the political spectrum - from religious conservative to libertarian to neoconservative - creating a multi-pronged ideological infrastructure that could appeal to different constituencies while advancing a unified agenda of corporate deregulation and wealth concentration.