If you listen to the people who run our culture, the “responsible” thing to do with your life’s work is not to pass it to your kids.
You’re supposed to “die broke,” dump the leftovers into a giant foundation, and feel morally superior while your heirs scramble in a world that’s getting nastier by the year.
Celebrities brag about disinheriting their children. Billionaires announce they’re leaving it all to “charity” (which usually means funding the same class of NGO busybodies who already run your life). Even middle-class boomers have quietly adopted the line: “I plan to have it all spent by the time I die.”
Most people feel in their gut that something about this is wrong.
Very few have the language to say why.
That’s what this conversation is about.
In this episode of Doug Casey’s Take, Doug and I talk with
, author of Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, and Thousand-Year Families and writer of the Substack Becoming Noble.
Johann tackles the core question almost nobody wants to say out loud:
Why should wealthy parents leave their wealth to their children instead of charity, foundations, or their dog?
From there, the conversation widens out into territory most “personal finance” and estate-planning books never touch:
Why so many rich parents secretly know they’ve raised kids who can’t handle a big inheritance—and choose disinheritance instead of fixing that failure.
The uncomfortable fact that if America’s richest families from 1900 had simply behaved normally, we’d have 16,000 billionaires today instead of ~700—and what that tells us about how fragile wealth really is across generations.
How the modern cult of “philanthropy” often functions as socially acceptable wealth destruction, where money disappears into mega-foundations run by ideological managers you’d never trust to raise your kids.
The older idea of dominion and stewardship—that what you own isn’t just “yours to blow,” but something you’re responsible for on behalf of your ancestors, your descendants, and your community.
Why almost nobody in today’s elite is commissioning beautiful architecture, art, or institutions… and what that says about the slow liquidation of Western civilization.
How ritual, family stories, and even things like Christmas and birthday parties can be used to train children to carry responsibility, not just consume.
What it looks like, in practical terms, to raise a future steward instead of a pampered consumer.
Doug presses Johann on the apparent contradiction between Christianity and wealth, the collapse of Western standards in art and public life, and whether any of this can realistically be reversed—or whether we’re just building lifeboats while the big ship goes down.
I come at it from the angle of a father with two older kids, trying to build something that lasts, and trying not to screw up their launch into the world.
If you’re:
A parent sitting on real assets, torn between “helping the kids” and “not ruining them,”
A younger person watching your parents plan to “run it all down to zero,”
Or just someone who senses that “I’ll give it all to charity” has become a respectable way of dodging responsibility…
…this conversation will give you a much clearer framework for what’s actually at stake.
Hit play on the video below, and if it resonates, grab Johann’s book Leaving a Legacy and subscribe to his Substack Becoming Noble. This is the kind of thinking we’re going to need if we want families that outlast one crazy lifetime.
Best,
Matt
P.S. Doug and I will take a break from podcasting from Dec. 1 - Jan. 15. Regular essays as well as the paid newsletter will continue as normal during this time.
