Astral Codex Ten

Mercatus Center

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Mercatus Center

Article

Mercatus Center is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 22, 2025 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “estimate the overhead for the Mercatus Center, the libertarian charity that Cowen”; “Mercatus Center, the libertarian charity that Cowen runs”; “a new paper for the Mercatus Center”. It most often appears alongside Trump, 1955, 4chan.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 22, 2025
  • Last seen: December 31, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Contra MR On Charity Regrants
May 22, 2025 · Original source
Maybe Cowen thinks that 30% is too high an overhead? I asked o3 to estimate the overhead for the Mercatus Center, the libertarian charity that Cowen runs. It said that it was hard to give an apples-to-apples number because much of the administrative work that would be counted under “overhead” in other charities is covered by George Mason University. But it estimated that if the federal government gives a dollar of research funding to Mercatus, about 40% would go to combined university and Mercatus overhead - higher than the average USAID charity.
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
December 31, 2025 · Original source
He argues, in a new paper for the Mercatus Center, “We Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Were,” that a large portion of the wealth of U.S. households, which is found in the value of their homes, is, in fact, not real wealth, but a result of being trapped in rising cost accommodations in a housing-poor society. Here is the abstract:
Inline links: “We Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Were,”