What Are You Doing to Defend Capitalism?

Most people who claim to “believe in markets” do nothing to actually defend them. They consume the prosperity capitalism produces, while outsourcing the philosophy of capitalism to university departments that despise it. They donate to institutions that attack it. They praise entrepreneurs while voting for policies that slowly strangle entrepreneurship.

And then we all look around and wonder: Why is anti-capitalism suddenly the default worldview of the educated class?

Because capitalists stopped defending capitalism.

Below are five ideas—drawn from Ayn Rand, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, and the failures of modern philanthropy—on how we got here, and one new proposal for how business founders can do better.

Ayn Rand’s Final Lecture: The Mistake of Altruism

In her final lecture, Ayn Rand made a point that is now almost taboo: the moral code of altruism is incompatible with a free society.

Altruism, as Rand defined it, is not kindness or generosity—it is the moral doctrine that the individual exists for the sake of others. Its logical endpoint is that your wealth, your work, and your achievements must be justified by “social purposes.”

Once you accept that premise, capitalism becomes morally indefensible.
Because how can you defend a system based on individual choice, profit, and voluntary exchange in a culture that treats self-interest as a sin?

Her warning was simple:

If you want to keep capitalism, you must reject the premise that the individual is morally obligated to serve society.

Today, that premise dominates universities, nonprofits, media, and even corporations themselves. The result is a generation of business leaders who are embarrassed to defend the system that made their success possible.

Costco has done more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation

Charlie Munger loved to shock audiences with one of his favorite lines: “Costco has done more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation.”

His point wasn’t to diminish philanthropy. It was to highlight something people forget: well-run businesses improve humanity more reliably than well-meaning foundations.

Costco, by operating efficiently and obsessively cutting margins, has saved middle-class families hundreds of billions of dollars. It has expanded consumer surplus, raised living standards, and done it at massive scale without moralizing or political theater.

Munger understood that capitalism works because incentives work. Philanthropy rarely works because incentives typically don’t.

Warren Buffett’s Regret About the Gates Foundation

Buffett has never said this publicly in those terms, but people close to him have increasingly acknowledged a sentiment he has hinted at: he wishes his philanthropic contributions had gone to initiatives aligned with building rather than dismantling the system that enabled his wealth.

Why?

Because the Gates Foundation—like most large modern foundations—has drifted into a worldview dominated by technocratic paternalism, deference to elite academic ideology and conventional NGO thinking.

Buffett believed his money would be deployed with businesslike rigor. Instead, he ended up financially underwriting a worldview fundamentally suspicious of the very forces that created Berkshire Hathaway.

This isn’t unique to Gates Foundation. It’s the rule, not the exception.

Leaving Your Wealth to a University Just Funds Anti-Capitalism

The modern university system is the world’s most effective machine for producing anti-capitalists. Universities produce something far more corrosive: credentialed bureaucratic elites who intellectually disdain markets, emotionally distrust profit, and professionally depend on ever-expanding regulation.

Marc Andreessen argues that elite universities have abandoned their missions of merit and innovation, reshaping admissions through DEI ideology, politicization, and heavy reliance on foreign enrollment. The result, he says, is that many capable American students—especially from middle-class or rural backgrounds—are effectively locked out. In leaked messages, he described Stanford and MIT as political lobbying operations hostile to American technological progress and claimed Stanford’s internal politics cost it billions in future donations.

In his view, universities no longer cultivate the talent and mindset that sustain capitalism. Instead, they produce a bureaucratic, anti-market worldview that undermines entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

When billionaires leave “legacy gifts” to universities, they are not funding education.
They are funding the intellectual engine of regulatory expansion, anti-capitalist ideology, and activist capture.

You can’t spend your life building a business that rewards merit and then hand your fortune to institutions dedicated to undermining meritocracy itself.

Don’t Leave It to Your Children Either

The alternative—leaving everything to your children—is just as misguided.

Every serious study of multigenerational wealth shows the same thing: large inheritances destroy ambition, competence, and identity.

Warren Buffett famously said: “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

If you built your wealth through risk-taking, discipline, and delayed gratification, why would you deprive your children of the very experiences that made you who you are?

The children of great wealth rarely become capitalists. They become aristocrats. And aristocracies, historically, are capitalism’s natural enemy.

A New Idea: Pay-It-Forward Equity

So what should builders—founders, entrepreneurs, owners—do with the wealth they won’t consume? Here is my proposal: Pay-It-Forward Equity.

Rather than giving wealth to a foundation, a university, or your heirs, you invest it into future entrepreneurs through a new instrument construct:

When the entrepreneur succeeds and gets liquidity, they must reinvest the funds into new entrepreneurs—plus 10% of their own capital.

How It Works

Pay-It-Forward Equity is a generational investment mechanism where successful founders direct their unused wealth into new entrepreneurs, creating a perpetuating chain of capital rather than a traditional fund or foundation. When a recipient eventually earns liquidity, they don’t return the money to the original investor; instead, they are required to reinvest the principal into the next generation of builders—plus an additional 10% of their own money. That 10% functions as the “cost of capital” they originally benefited from, far cheaper than venture capital, debt, or equity dilution, while ensuring real skin in the game. The result is a compounding, founder-driven ecosystem in which every successful entrepreneur becomes a future investor, preserving capitalism’s engine of creation without feeding dynastic wealth or ideologically captured institutions.

1. Capital compounds across generations instead of being consumed by institutions that hate capitalism.

2. The entrepreneur becomes a steward, not just a beneficiary.

3. Who could possibly be better suited to make capital allocation decisions?

4. The required 10% personal co-investment ensures skin in the game, honoring Milton Friedman’s observation: “No one spends other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.”

5. It avoids dynastic wealth, bureaucratic foundations, and ideological institutions.

6. It creates a perpetual cycle of risk-taking and value creation.

Doesn’t VC already do this?

Some might object that venture capital already performs this function, but it doesn’t—not in any moral or civilizational sense. VC may function financially, but it doesn’t reinforce the larger moral or cultural engine that sustains capitalism.

VC recycles capital back to its limited partners, and those LPs are overwhelmingly the very institutions that channel wealth into anti-capitalist ends: university endowments, legacy foundations, and family offices focused on preservation rather than production. In other words, when founders succeed, their winnings often flow straight into the hands of the ideological and bureaucratic class. Pay-It-Forward Equity breaks that cycle by ensuring that the proceeds of entrepreneurial success are reinvested directly into new builders, not siphoned into institutions that work to undermine the system that created the wealth in the first place.

If You Believe in Capitalism, Build Institutions That Reinforce It

The uncomfortable truth is that capitalism is losing cultural ground because capitalists have abandoned the intellectual, moral, and institutional defense of the system that created their wealth.

If you want to defend capitalism:

• Don’t fund the people who hate it.

• Don’t cripple your children with unearned privilege.

• Don’t assume markets will survive without advocates.

• And don’t outsource your legacy to bureaucrats.

Instead, create mechanisms—like Pay-It-Forward Equity—that empower future builders.

Capitalism survives only when capital is allocated by people who believe in it.

So: what are you doing to defend capitalism?