Johann Kurtz: Why Billionaires Shouldn't Give It All Away
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Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
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[0:01] Johann Kurtz: Johann Kurtz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to talk. I am as well. Freaks for those of you who are unaware of Johan's work, his sub-stack bestseller Being Noble, he just came out with a book, Leaving a Legacy, which I've been reading through over the last week, opened it on Thanksgiving morning, read a few chapters while my children were playing, watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I think it was very apt to be reading this book. on that morning, particularly surrounded by my family on a holiday. Beyond, like I was saying before, we hit record. I'm very excited to be speaking with you today because I feel like this conversation will be a continuation of a long running thread on this show throughout this year, particularly about this clash of the generations we're seeing in the West, particularly baby boomers.

[2:03] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I think, I think we're at a very interesting point and we were discussing before the show that I'm not an expert on Bitcoin, but perhaps an area of shared interest is this question of time horizons when it comes to wealth, when it comes to projects, when it comes to vision. And when I started pulling at this thread that became the subject of the book and the sort of central question of the book is why is it wrong to give your wealth to children upon your death? Sorry, why is it wrong to give your wealth to charity upon your death rather than your own? children and this is in response to a sort of a wide range of celebrity announcements that this is what they plan to do and also sort of mega rich billionaire announcements that this is what they intended to do.

[4:22] Johann Kurtz: a rich discussion to be had there. Well, having read the book, I think the story of King Edward is particularly interesting. In the 1930s, fell in love with an American woman while he was king and decided to resign as king and go live a life with his lover. And the way you describe in the book, he basically had an abdication of duty and it wasn't until after he stepped down from the throne that he really realized what he was missing out on and the disappointment he brought the country of England specifically because he was completely abandoned his duty. And I think that's indicative of what's happening at a wider scale here in the West right now. It's not only a king sort of releasing himself from his duty and not recognizing the profundity of that, but we're beginning to see that seep into the culture more widely.

[5:25] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, no, exactly. Well, I think there are these behaviors which we sort of assume must come naturally to man and must be inevitable. But it turns out that a lot of those behaviors, a lot of those healthy expressions of societal cohesion are intimately tied to our beliefs, our sort of foundational convictions about reality. And as those beliefs shift, actually a lot of the things that we assumed would live forever just start falling apart. You know, in the case of Edward VIII, who is one of the figures in the book who serves as this cautionary tale about divorcing the notion of wealth, privilege, power from this notion of duty, essentially.

[7:15] Johann Kurtz: So you like about about Christianity and I am a Christian, but at least Christianity gave the wealthy men of the West an entire integrated framework of duty, a way of understanding their place in the world, why they had what they had, how they were morally. responsible for their children and charity and so forth. It was a time-tested framework. And now that an entire class of people has ascended to a position of great wealth, essentially the boomer generation and some of those who came after them, outside the context of that moral superstructure of Christendom, If not Christianity, and you know, I'm a partial here, but if not Christianity, we do need to form this entire coherent philosophy of duty as to the nature of the affluence we've built, like what is its purpose?

[8:32] Johann Kurtz: No, really is, and it's perplexing as a Christian myself. it... I'm trying to think of all the phrases because I was actually reading something this morning. Maybe we'll just lean into it. Do you think a lot of what we're seeing in terms of this hedonism, this sort of we're going to spend our wealth before we die and if we have more left over we're going to give it to charity because we don't want to spoil you kids you need to work hard. Is the root problem of this issue seeped to the fact that we've fallen away from Christ as a society broadly in the West? Because that's one thing I loved about the book is all the passages you have throughout it that really anchor these sort of core building blocks of a flourishing society that are being completely thrown to the wayside these days.

[9:41] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, well, I mean, it's there's this phenomenon that takes place in really all areas of society. You can see some reflection of this, which is the enlightenment comes and it challenges as it does sort of enlightenment tenants become popular amongst different areas of society. They challenge the sort of foundations of belief, long held convictions, traditions and so forth. And in some ways that has incredibly positive effects. You know, the separation of science from kind of natural science. where there's all kinds of like dubious philosophical priors that are actually inhibiting the evolution of science. In some ways there are benefits there. In other ways it has, I think, detrimental effects on society, but that is not immediately obvious, because people just have ways of doing things, they have certain assumptions, they grow up in a cultural milieu that still basically inherits all its traditions and all its assumptions from what came before.

[11:45] Johann Kurtz: But yeah, I mean, I think one's relationship to property is really part of this. The kind of older notion that I refer to in the book is not private property as we now understand it. It's this concept of dominion, which I think is a rather wonderful one, which is, yes, it is licit. It is justifiable for some people to have this tremendous wealth and power in society. But dominion, as the theologian Andrew Willard Jones put it, carries with it the burden of rule. It's much closer to this notion of kingship than merely being rich. As in you have your wealth for a purpose. It comes with demands upon you And and you know Dominion the root word there This is the biblical term that sort of transforms into our contemporary notion of property through the Enlightenment The root word there is is domus its house like it's a living relationship with what you have and it implies the necessity to nurture the inhabitants of that house be they Children or servants or you know, even animals it is this living relationship of mutual dependence that that the king has with his subjects.

[13:55] Johann Kurtz: which gave him memories which will last forever, which is like, it's great you had a birthday party and it's great that you had your favorite band come and play with you, but that is not the calling. That cannot be the central message of existence, of life. Like we have to get back to something more profound if we're to come up with a notion that is compelling enough to get the wealthy older generation to start using their wealth in a more righteous fashion. That's a great example. It seems like the older wealthy of today, they like these ephemeral experiences. You'll have those memories forever, but you'll have them.

[15:40] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, and when you refuse to recognize this, so the core question here is what's called partiality in philosophy. It's can it ever be defensible to preference those to give, especially to those who are close to me, either relationally or geographically, just because they're close. In other words, if I have five pounds, can I ever defend giving it to my son as opposed to giving it to someone who's starving in Africa? And I'm convinced the answer is yes. And it's funny when you start, and I can explain that, but when you start ignoring that principle, you very quickly run into into these crazy paradoxes, which I think are at the heart of why America is suffering, Britain is suffering right now.

[17:34] Johann Kurtz: philosophical version of this if you're interested, if you like. But the core question here is one of love. Like if you walk past a child and you don't save them and you instead turn to this cold rational calculation about, you know, affect maximalization. You've lost love and it's really love for those around us, love for those in our family, love for those in our community and our nation that is the fundamental animating principle in the very bonds of society and of selflessness at all. if you, yes, it is true that in this instance, if you sold your coat, you might save 10 children's lives and who knows what circumstances they're gonna be raised in.

[18:57] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, well, let's dive into it because I believe I recall correctly, like the biblical etymology of neighbor, the Greek word agape, right? Like that's really what it seeped in this. And there's three types of love in Christianity, agape being one of them. But this is, I think it's an important topic to dive into, like what are the different types of love and particularly why. Should you love your neighbor? And what does that do to help build not only a legacy, but a functioning society in the long run? Yeah, it's a great question. mean, it's kind of this, every so often you come across an assumption that deserves to be challenged.

[21:42] Johann Kurtz: these grand projects, these philanthropic projects, foundations, which they present as obviously moral good. And everyone, you, I mean, I probably you and many of your listeners look at some of these foundations and you think like you have this instinctive negative reaction. Like there is something that is really off about what they're doing, but because of the confused term of the language and therefore that kind of poisons the philosophy that builds off language. you're kind of robbed of any moral language to question or criticize those activities, short of like obvious conspiracy theories or just like obvious misdoing, some of which exist, of course. And I go into some of that in the book. But more than that, the actual foundations of the project is pretty questionable.

[22:32] Johann Kurtz: Well, this whole concept of locality, I it's applicable to a number of things, not only your duty to your neighbor, another human being, but in the context of this neglect of duty to build legacy over your dominion, within a dominion, I think another place in which it manifests is the physical architecture. Something we've covered over the years here is urbanism and how the physical environment. sort of affects your mentality. I think pulling on this thread of loving your neighbor, like I think it highlights the importance of really focusing on a locality for your neighbor. It's like, hey, you have to live with this person and these people, and you should make sure that they're taken care of and living good lives and aspire to be something greater.

[23:49] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, architecture is this wonderful sort of canary in the coal mine that something is really wrong, really sick at the heart of our society, which is just that like most cities now are so spiritually innovating. Like you walk around and you're just confronted with a sense of ugliness, of cheapness that you are in some sense being treated like a completely dispensable cog in a machine that can just inhabit any old thing that's as cheap as possible to erect. And it's getting to the heart of why that has happened is so interesting and so important. And I think it pulls in a lot of related themes here.

[25:53] Johann Kurtz: He spoke of wanting to transform his temporal goods into something lasting. Like he had this notion that his beliefs connected him. with eternity, but not just looking forwards in time. It wasn't a sort of progressive vision of the world. It was an eternal vision of the world in both directions. Like that which has always been beautiful and that which always will be beautiful. It was this kind of, this statement of values interwoven into the physical world through this commission and the sense of the permanence of morality and the human condition and man struggles and the need for beauty is this kind of breakthrough into something transcendent.

[27:46] Johann Kurtz: It really is. That's why I feel fortunate I recently moved back to the Philadelphia area, which certainly has its areas where it's lacking in beautiful aesthetics, but we're spoiled with quality builds throughout the city, particularly in the part that I'm living in right now. And it's truly inspiring driving, driving around with driving back from dropping the... the boys off at school today. And I always take the scenic route on the way home because there's beautiful stone homes and it is inspiring. It makes you really think like, wow, this is something worth preserving and something I hope I can contribute to. And I mean, on the point of business building too, there's, I think there's a great example of the book of a dynastic American family that made a very poor decision.

[29:21] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, no, exactly. One of the central contentions of the book, one of the central sort of philosophical arguments as to why dynasty is necessary, is that there are certain projects, the kind of projects that built the West and our most beautiful buildings, cathedrals and so forth, which are necessarily intergenerational in nature. They take a long time, great resources and careful stewardship of a chain of custodians with the same transcendent values to achieve. The Ford Foundation is a good example of what happens when you commit to a seemingly benign endeavor in the most massive way, assuming that good effects will result, but you lose that sort of virtuous family at the heart of the whole thing.

[31:16] Johann Kurtz: So they can't spend this money on themselves anymore, but at least they can sort of control how good is done in the world. Henry Ford II becomes the chairman of that upon the death of Edsel and Henry Ford the Elder. And he becomes quite literally one of the most powerful men in the world. Ford Foundation is the largest foundation in the world, immensely wealthy and powerful. Henry Ford II is a very wealthy and powerful person in his own right with his personal fortune. And the only other people on the board of the Ford Foundation are... men who were employed by Henry Ford, essentially, the Ford Motor Company employees.

[33:35] Johann Kurtz: to building a ESG system with Chinese characteristics, all this just weird stuff. that is totally like, all of this is essentially political stuff. It's governance stuff, but it's totally unaccountable to anyone. It's unelected. It's like they don't, the Gates Foundation, for example, doesn't accept any proposals to them. They have to like handpick the people who they're gonna make donations to, to go on projects. So it's like totally inscrutable, totally out of control, but massively powerful. whatever your politics, that's just such an unhealthy influence on society. So my conviction is that, I mean, you need this kind of dynastic control, this careful set of stewardship, responsibilities, intergenerational values, and you really need a conviction about what you're trying to achieve, which I think is really the key thing that's lacking here.

[34:28] Johann Kurtz: Well, it's also indicative of what happens when you sort of neglect dominion, right? Because another consequence of this is, I think at least partly a consequence of this, was the degradation of Detroit, which obviously the Ford family had helped build up and one day ceased control. of the board of the Ford Foundation. That's when it began going out and doing these things outside of the dominion of Detroit, Michigan. And Detroit is now completely hollowed out. Yeah, quite so. Yeah. I mean, the Ford family say what you like about Henry Ford, the elder. And I'm sure people have their issues with him, possibly justifiably, but he was loyal to his city.

[37:22] Johann Kurtz: to call out that what happened to Detroit was just this travesty. Yeah. Strong towns. Another great book. Make sure you read it. Chuck Morrone. that, that was another book that really opened my eyes. And I think if you're looking for sort of playbook on how to build a strong town, particularly if you are somebody with a lot of wealth, it would like to bring back some of these core concepts, and build a legacy. That's definitely a must read, but on this subject of building a legacy, think. One concept that you touch on in the book that people have a natural aversion to is the concept of nepotism. You make the case for why it's good. Why is nepotism good?

[38:12] Johann Kurtz: That's a great question. One thing that I really encourage people to do is not to reason about claims, like to reason about the most important issues in their life using these terms that they only tenuously understand and that have this uncertain history that have all kinds of like hostile claims smuggled into them. And then... without that sort of deep reflection on what they're actually saying and believe make these very consequential decisions. like nepotism, let's say everyone uses that term, they throw it around, right? Like, oh, so-and-so is a nepo baby. And that's this incredibly personal slight. But why should that be so? mean, like acting has always been a family business, right?

[40:19] Johann Kurtz: factors which bring forth excellence. So if we're gonna reason about nepotism, we should at least understand what it is because there seem to be all these confounding factors like family businesses outperform publicly traded companies in the marketplace. Like this is actually a well established financial phenomenon. You can look at the work of John A. Davis, who's a former professor at Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management. It is pretty well reflected and well understood that family businesses have these unique advantages like their ultra long time horizon planning, carefully managed and planned succession strategies, like the fact they have an intrinsic loyalty to the institution that is not simply a mercenary one, that people can count on being with the same institution in five, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 years, and so are willing to make sacrificial decisions in the short term that pay off in the long term.

[42:26] Johann Kurtz: which had radical ramifications in pretty much every domain of Western life, there was a string of popes who were quite clearly corrupted in their role and they had illegitimate sons and they brought them into the church under the pretense that these were pope's nephews and they basically ransacked the church using this illicit connection. And that was what became nepotism in the English language. In other words, it was a practice of deception, of infiltration of institutions that were intended to be public by private families in order for enrichment of the individual family under a practice of deception. In other words, it's much closer to what we would now term corruption as in political corruption than it is merely familial preference within a particular industry for one's own children.

[44:16] Johann Kurtz: in, for example, deceptive practices. I think there's a family in the States, obviously this isn't my country, that has basically been, has been applying for loans, fortunately, and I think this is in the motel industry has been using a whole financial infrastructure to enrich their own family under the pretense that this is an objective policy That is suspect but the the basic idea of helping your children into the industry that you are excellent in and trying to ensure that they are also excellent in the industry is like a cornerstone of Western society like up until about 1950 that is how literally the entire West was built

[45:00] Johann Kurtz: This gets back to duty and dives into the topic of how do you actually pass along this knowledge? What is, what should the relationship with your children look like? How do you, how do you fulfill your duty of making sure that you have a legacy? Cause it just doesn't happen. You need to actually work towards it. What are the best practices to make sure that your children understand the gravity of what you're passing down to them. Yeah, great question. So this was a dimension that I didn't anticipate being an integral part of the book when I started it. I thought it would be a philosophical defensive at a conceptual level of dynasty of generational wealth of a stable upper class.

[47:30] Johann Kurtz: then that's the only way of ensuring you have hardworking children. And I understand why that's your instinct. However, history shows that that is not necessary. And indeed, if that is the route that you pursue, you can never have these multi-generational great works, which I argue is a tremendous shame. I think basically what's happened is, it used to be that society was naturally set up. so that you could pass on wealth to your children without corrupting them. In other words, if you go back to 1819 before in the US, almost every family, 90 % of families are agrarian workers, typically working small, personally held farms. And when a patriarch passed on his wealth to his children, what he was actually doing was passing them a farm and some other assets, perhaps a house, et cetera.

[49:09] Johann Kurtz: overwhelming trend towards the liquidity of wealth. So it used to be that, yes, even aristocrats were very wealthy, but again, their wealth was bound up in physical estates that they couldn't sell, know, productive land around the estate that had to be managed if not actively worked, art, which was particular to their family and was therefore not liquid, et cetera, et cetera. So they had some liquid wealth, but they were basically inheriting these assets that were tremendously luxurious, but made again, these great demands of stewardship of dominion. That all changes in the 20th century. So you can now pass on wealth in entirely liquid assets, as is in fact now the norm.

[51:10] Johann Kurtz: dangerous games and the rest precisely because they need to learn to master self-discipline in the face of risk, of pain, of hardship. That's why the aristocracy have always engaged in this paradoxical relationship where they have the most to lose and yet they frivolously, it seems, engage in hunting boars and jousting and combat tournaments and so forth because it brings out this self-sacrificial relationship with difficulty that is necessary. The importance of ritual, which is D. Assumption of these lived practices which your forefathers did before you which your your generations which follow you will will take on themselves and so it shifts you from this this moment into eternal time and I talked particularly about Christmas as this very interesting example of an institution in which all Generations are sort of contemporaneous like they all return for one day a year to the same practices the same values the same vision of the world And and there's there's a lot else.

[52:25] Johann Kurtz: How much importance does the extended family come into this? Because I think of my family, I feel very fortunate. I come from a large Irish Catholic family. My mom was the youngest of eight and they started this tradition of bringing the whole family down to the beach every summer. And we still keep that going to this day where now between myself, aunts, uncles, cousins, and now their children. We've got a pretty big group that never turns to the beach. And I like to think this is sort of anchoring us in this ideal of like, we're a strong family and this is how we do things.

[53:07] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I'm not sure, and this is the first time I've thought about this, so don't take this as a canonical answer. I'm not sure it's the fact of the size of the family itself that is the important factor there. It's the two things that are implied by that. Large families tend to have a series of values and often transcendent religious beliefs which are motivating the family. to like that they are making sacrifices for higher ideals. Having a large family is a difficult thing. I've got a few kids myself and I've had them since I was quite young. And it certainly makes your life more challenging.

[55:03] Johann Kurtz: and also it's, just like a logistic chant, task. Like a lot of people have this inertia when it comes to family, like, I'll call my dad a few times a year, but it takes a motivated disciplined family to all get together, several times a year, especially to enact these very healthy sort of civilization, the affirming rituals. Like again, I'm not American, but I really appreciate the, the, importance of something like. Thanksgiving, where the family gets together, they inhabit these rituals that every other family in the country shares, that their forefathers have before them, that hopefully their children will after them. And in so doing, society and the family attains a solidity and an integration, metaphysically speaking, which I think is tremendously important.

[55:47] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, it really is. it's, I mean, this dovetails into what I think is one of the biggest problems in society right now, particularly in the United States. And I imagine in England as well is this delay in family formation, which many are attributing to the economic stress that younger generations are under and others would extend that further and attribute it to the fact that the older generations refuse to throw millennials and Generation Z a bone financially to help get them on their feet. And again, going back to duty, seems like there's a dereliction of duty on the older generations to cede the continuation of their families, for lack of a better phrase there.

[56:44] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I think this question of family and society's variability to reproduce the sort of natalism birthrate question is intimately tied up across every generation in different ways to this question of wealth and duty being divorced from each other. So in some sense, well, let me give you an example. There's a very important demographer in this exact space called Lyman Stone. He's one of the common sources. Whenever you see a study on the effects of X and Y on birth rates, it's often Lyman Stone or the Institute of Family Studies, which is where he works that is the root of that. So he does very important work and I'd encourage people to check him out.

[58:29] Johann Kurtz: Is you know, it's often lamented now that I wish people just had this instinct for marriage like previous generations did like weren't the novels of jane austin so wonderful because there was such a lived sense of romance and people just had this instinct for marriage and stable relationships and so forth But actually if you look at the civilizational practices of those prior generations The whole of society was making a huge investment in ensuring that institutions were maintained and patronized that got young people together in these stable pairings again and again until they pair bonded. So in Georgian London, which is the context of the novels of Jane Austen, There was this whole marriage circuit.

[1:00:30] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I mean, this gets into the effect of tech, technology on the interpersonal relationships, particularly of younger people, because of the Jane Austen scenes that you just described. mean, they don't really happen anymore. People are literally looking at their phones, looking for a partner to potentially pair up with and meet one-on-one. long held traditions of, mean here in the United States, remember when I lived in the South, I went to Cotillion, you had the debutante balls. You were sort of forced to go learn etiquette manners and learn how to dance with a girl. And you were expected to go to those classes. And then eventually when you get old enough, you have the debutante ball.

[1:02:27] Johann Kurtz: Definitely, I mean, there's this odd thing now where it's the upper classes who are able to weather the storm best to impart to, know, Rob Hedison, who calls this luxury beliefs, this idea that they're making very bad social and sort of ethical decisions, but they're able to insulate themselves from the worst effects of that via shared resources. And it's really the people further down the socioeconomic ladder that really feel this the worst. know, when, when poor people get divorced or are never married in the first place and have children, whether intentional or not, creates all kinds of stresses that you just can't escape from. And that becomes a very destructive cycle.

[1:04:49] Johann Kurtz: whole calendar of festivals, fates, pranks, you know, it's this wonderfully colorful, intensely social environment that we've really lost. So yeah, anything that people of means can do. And again, It's rooted in a community, it's rooted in love, it's rooted to personal relationships, all of these, like that's how you thicken the social fabric around you. Anything you can be to not be maximally sort of transient and ephemeral, that's very poisonous. So this question of like rooted patronage becomes essential. So what are the first steps to get back to this? How do we climb out of this morass that society seems to be stuck in right now?

[1:05:39] Johann Kurtz: I, you know, there's sort of two things, two core themes to the book. The first is about raising children who, the book is sort of framed in raising children in the context of wealth. to go on to achieve great things. But really it's universally applicable in that we all live in an incredibly material, materially abundant culture now, even if a lot of those material abundances are in kind of cheap and disposable items like TVs and who knows what on the internet and so forth. And that brings intense temptation that really it was only some members of the upper classes that would have had. in the past.

[1:07:31] Johann Kurtz: There's a lot of very wealthy people who I consider to be fundamentally well-intentioned, but misled due to this slightly pathological culture of philanthropy that has arisen. And it really does concern this rootedness of community, this love of neighbor as a proper understanding of charity. And the final chapter in the book is like. Attempting to provide inspiration on all of the ways that you can start reviving the social fabric of your particular community and family. Looking at examples from contemporary charity and the great families and men of the West. But I think those two things, like children and place, are neglected in today's society to our great detriment.

[1:08:19] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, that's, mean, particularly the tech elite. I tweeted this out on Thanksgiving. saw that you saw it, but that's all I could think of after reading a few chapters that morning was if you look at the tech class, the billionaire class there, it's a lot of, childless men who have billions of dollars that are extremely philanthropic, no connection to any particular locality. Didn't mention this in the tweet, but a lot of them are transhumanists. It seems like they're trying to separate themselves from our humanity. And it is actually incredibly frightening when you think that the wealthy elite, the upcoming wealthy elite of our age think this way.

[1:09:10] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's sort of like one step removed from being removed from your community is actually being removed from the very essence of the self, you know, and attempting to transcend your mortal existence. There's a lot I could say about that. That's a whole other ram-hole. expand on, let's expand on because I think it's important. And I hope some of the individuals in this particular class would be introspective about this. And it is, like I watch it, like that Brian Johnson guy is trying to live forever. He's doing all these experiments, live streaming himself doing five grams of mushrooms. Like it's some sort of public experiment that people are going to get value out of. It's like, what are you doing? What is the purpose of all this?

[1:10:01] Johann Kurtz: Well, for me it's difficult to discuss this subject in a compelling way to people who don't already believe what I believe. And the reason for that is when it comes to morality and this life, fundamentally, I believe what I believe and I act what I act and I argue what I argue because of the most foundational truth claims that I hold dear about the world. And those are basically theological convictions, faith. And I can then nevertheless go out and I can argue on secular podcasts I've been on some finance podcasts and so forth with non-christians Quite confidently because I believe in natural law. In other words, I believe that like every aspect of our material reality is in some way reflective of Fundamental truths, which is why even from the pre-christian cultures, you know the culture of Aristotle Aristotle had so much access to the truth to correct ideas about the good, the beautiful and so forth, despite not having a Christian faith because he was an intelligent, perceptive, contemplative person who looked about and he saw the sort of reflection of the divine in creation itself and was able to reason from that.

[1:12:08] Johann Kurtz: when it comes to life itself, you know? And so like, that is not to say that there is no discussion to be had on the subject of transhumanism. It's more to say that like the discussion that needs to be had is a really deep philosophical and theological discussion about the very substrate of existence itself, which is difficult to sort of casually transition into. I mean, you can of course make observations like. it's very unclear to me what good a lot of these people are actually doing in the lives of the people who surround them. But yeah, I mean, that's a big discussion. Yeah. And so, well, I'm sure you've seen the trend too.

[1:14:04] Johann Kurtz: Definitely. Yeah, I mean, the kind of devil's bargain of philanthropy is we're not going to take care of our personal relationships first and foremost, because the classic model of community-centered religious charity is essentially palliative in that it goes to people who are suffering in society and tries to ease their suffering. So it typically takes the form of arms giving to the poor or donations to hospitals or feeding the needy, sheltering. So it's like taking someone who's suffering and trying to ease their suffering as an expression of love and kindness. What philanthropy does is it says actually like we're going to dispense with the theological convictions.

[1:15:42] Johann Kurtz: with the World Economic Forum and maybe I can and it just becomes this like it becomes this this centralization of power this this this confluence in their minds of some misconception of charity plus bureaucracy plus very spurious scientism plus you know like powerful government centralized institutions international action that is like At a certain point, you have to stand back and be like, yeah, wait, there's actually more people living in absolute. There's, twice as many people living in absolute poverty in Africa as there was in the nineties. Like, what are we doing? Like people all over America are dying deaths of despair. What are we doing?

[1:16:40] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, my favorite sort of LARP in the realm of us Americans are going to go save Africa, I believe it was the actor Ashton Kutcher ran this big malaria net drive. They've raised millions of dollars to get malaria nets. I forget in exactly what country in Africa and they came to find that they just use the nets as fishing. fishing nets and drained part of the area of all their fish. the highlights, again, if you have this dislocation physically from dominion, and it goes back to central planning more broadly, which is something I like to focus on a lot, particularly as it pertains to monetary economics and the effects of central planning on monetary economics have very perverse negative externalities.

[1:18:43] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I mean... My conviction is like, it's not that we should be ignoring Africans. That's just like, if you feel that's your calling, then move there. And I'm like completely serious about that. I mean, there's someone who's quoted in the book, called Robert Lupton, and Robert Lupton is a career charity guy, and I think he's a real hero. And he runs this organization called FCS, Focus Community Strategies, and he wrote this expose called Toxic Charity, which actually looks at the real world effects of these very large philanthropic endeavors and often they cause like complete chaos. mean like the classic model that they all follow is something like, you know, people in Sudan, South Sudan need clothes.

[1:20:32] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, if you want to solve the problem, you got to be close to the problem. Now, I guess just to wrap up, I you mentioned before we hit record, you're not really well versed in Bitcoin, but I do think we both agree that to achieve some of these legacy goals, you need to be able to store wealth and pass it on. And I think that's where we align very tightly is this idea that being wealthy is not a bad thing. It is virtuous, especially if you're bringing good things into the world and doing good things within your dominion and following your duty, living up to your duty to do good in the world and love your neighbor.

[1:22:32] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, I buy that. I I think two things are in tension. The first is like, to the extent that Bitcoin can protect you from inflationary pressures, where a centralized institution is essentially devaluing your money in order to pursue their own agenda. That can be a very good thing for the empowerment of specific communities because you actually have sovereignty over your wealth. On the other hand, there is a tension that I see in Bitcoin, is once relationship with money can become pathological, when one loses sight of the fact that it is ultimately intended to bring about real world goods. In and of itself, money is not a moral quality.

[1:24:08] Johann Kurtz: I'm very happy you said that. think it's very important because there are many within Bitcoin who view it as like, I mean, Michael Saylor, most famously, I'm going to buy as much Bitcoin as possible and then I'm burning my keys when I die. Another childless billionaire. And I completely disagree with that view of Bitcoin or that perspective on what Bitcoin is and what it's meant to achieve. think I it's incredibly important to use it as a tool to do good in the world. And so I'm very, very happy that you brought that up. And for our audience, particularly, which is filled with a lot of Bitcoiners to think about that because it is important. There's many people too focused on the end state of Bitcoin's full monetization. It's like, well, you can use it as this tool to do good along the way, because who knows how long it will actually take to reach the the full potential that you believe it will.

[1:25:09] Johann Kurtz: Yeah, absolutely. Leaving a legacy in heritage charity and thousand year families. We can get on the thousand year families, but maybe we can do that another time. Johan, this was an incredible joy for me. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for all the work that you do with your sub stack, becoming noble. It's incredibly important work. I truly believe that. I think we need a shift in the mentality, particularly in Western society in terms of what are we doing here? How are we building for the long term and what is our legacy going to be for our generation, particularly as Millennials, Gen Z, Boomers? It's not too late to start thinking about it either. think there's a lot of a boomer hate out there, but I know there are many good boomers out there that are thinking about this stuff as well. But we just need, I think, these ideas to become more popular and people need to think more intently. about these things.

[1:26:15] Johann Kurtz: Well, it's been a complete pleasure and I'm really, really grateful for the invitation. So thank you. Enjoy your night and that's all we have today. Peace and love freaks.