When addressing their venture capital angels, the entrepreneurs of the Russian doll would admit that this interlocking set of institutions should be regarded as an integrated system for the production of political ideas. For instance, Richard Fink, one of the primary protagonists in building up George Mason University as a neoliberal outpost, by linking it directly to the Koch Foundation, of which he later became president, informed his prospective funders: … The translation of ideas into action requires the development of intellectual raw materials, their conversion into specific policy products, and the marketing and distribution of these products to citizen-consumers. Grant makers, Fink argued, would do well to invest in change along the entire production continuum, funding scholars and university programs where the intellectual framework for social transformation is developed, think tanks where scholarly ideas get translated into specific policy proposals, and implementation groups to bring these proposals into the political marketplace and eventually to consumers.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 127