Mutualism and Wealth: Why Hoarders Lose and Circulators Win
- ERIC BOROMISA
- Aug 18, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 4, 2025
Let’s talk about the elephant in the boardroom: Capitalism is eating itself.
We live in a world where the richest 1% hoard wealth like a dragon guarding a pile of gold, while the rest scramble for the scraps. Open loop thinking—the belief that I can extract, accumulate, and isolate wealth without consequence—is the core operating system of modern capitalism.
The trouble is: open loops always close. And in economics, that loop usually snaps back as social unrest, regulatory backlash, market collapse—or all three.
If Part 1 of this series showed how Mutualism applies to climate, Part 2 is about capital and wealth. Mutualism is the successor to the version of capitalism that currently incentivizes hoarding, externalizing harm, and treating wealth like a zero-sum trophy instead of a flowing resource.
Open Loop Wealth: The Hoarder Mentality
Open loop capitalism looks like this:
Maximize extraction. Sweatshop labor, tax avoidance, regulatory arbitrage.
Consolidate control. Move the profits to private equity shells, offshore accounts, or buybacks.
Ignore the spillover. Rising inequality, collapsing trust, and frayed social fabric are “not my problem.”
This is short-term alpha with long-term cancer.
You see it in the news cycle every week:
Billionaires racing to build private bunkers in New Zealand.
Tech CEOs hoarding cash while workers are “resource optimized” into oblivion.
Real estate speculators pricing out entire cities and wondering why people start voting for policies that eat them alive.
It’s the economic equivalent of drinking from the punch bowl and spiking it with poison on the way out.
Closed Loop Wealth → Mutualism
Now imagine a different operating system for capital: Mutualism.
Mutualist wealth is circular: it flows, compounds, and stabilizes systems rather than destabilizing them.
Key principles:
Wealth is a flow, not a fortress. Money that sits dies. Money that moves creates compounding value.
The system is the asset. You can’t extract from a burning house and expect to enjoy the proceeds.
Your stakeholders are your allies. Treat them like adversaries, and the loop will close with pitchforks or regulation.
In practice, Mutualism isn’t charity—it’s enlightened self-interest. It aligns profit with resilience. You invest in the system that feeds you, not just your personal scorecard.
The Mutualist vs. Hoarder Economy
Let’s compare how each thinks and operates:
Open Loop Hoarder | Closed Loop Mutualist |
Extracts max profit today | Optimizes for system longevity |
Externalizes costs (taxes, labor, environment) | Internalizes costs and builds buffers |
Treats community as disposable | Treats community as compounding asset |
Hoards wealth in isolation | Circulates wealth for strategic stability |
Lives in fear of backlash | Builds legitimacy and durable influence |
A Story of Two CEOs
Open Loop CEO: IPOs at $3B, sells half, moves the money to an offshore trust. Lays off 30% of staff for “efficiency.” Three years later, his sector faces regulatory crackdown. Public trust is gone. He’s rich, but the business is a husk.
Mutualist CEO: Sells the same SaaS company but structures the exit with an employee ownership plan, local investment fund, and a climate-resilient supply chain. Keeps enough personal wealth to be free, but the company continues to grow under the goodwill of stakeholders.
One is a target. The other is an institution.
The Wealth Loop Always Closes
Here’s the part open loop thinkers miss: Wealth hoarding is self-terminating.
Hoard cash → Starve employees → Lose talent → Lose innovation → Lose market share.
Hoard land → Drive unaffordability → Spark social and political revolt → Lose legal protections.
Hoard influence → Trigger antitrust or populist backlash → Lose freedom to operate.
Circulation is the ultimate risk hedge.
Mutualists understand that wealth is permission to play the long game—not to run off with the chips.
Mutualism as Post-Capitalist Upgrade
People love to frame the future as capitalism vs. socialism. That binary is dead.
Mutualism is post-capitalist in architecture, capitalist in energy. It doesn’t require a single ethnic monoculture, a Nordic tax regime, or the EU’s bureaucracy to function. It’s networked, border-agnostic, and voluntary because it aligns incentives.
You keep private ownership.
You still earn returns.
But your returns are higher and safer because the loop is closed.
Think Y Combinator for society rather than Soviet five-year plan.
Mutualist Practices for Wealth Builders
If you’re a founder, investor, or operator ready to shift from open to closed loop, here’s the playbook:
Stop Pretending Hoarding is Strategy
Money under the mattress (or in offshore shells) loses compounding power.
Circulate into productive, resilient assets—clean energy, housing, regenerative agriculture.
Align Your Wealth With System Health
Invest where your returns depend on broad stability: workforce well-being, community infrastructure, climate mitigation.
Stop funding extractive models that undermine your own long-term base.
Redesign Ownership Structures
Employee stock ownership, profit-sharing, or community co-ops don’t just feel good—they de-risk rebellion and attrition.
Your stakeholders literally own the upside of stability.
Build Wealth Loops, Not Dead Ends
Make every dollar move with purpose: from your profits to your suppliers, employees, community, and back into your market.
Velocity and trust compound faster than hoarding ever will.
The Coming Wealth Schism
Over the next decade, we’ll see a stark divide:
Open loop wealth will trigger more volatility, backlash, and regulation.
Mutualist wealth will quietly consolidate influence and durability.
It’s not morality—it’s mechanics. Fragile systems punish hoarders and reward circulators.
And as trust in institutions erodes, Mutualists will become the new centers of gravity. Communities, employees, and regulators will rally around them because they represent continuity, not extraction.
Your Choice: Be the Loop or Break It
If you’re reading this as a founder, investor, or executive, the question is simple:
Do you want to be the dragon guarding a pile of gold in a burning forest?
Or the architect of a network that compounds wealth and stability for decades?
Mutualism doesn’t ask you to become a saint. It asks you to play the long game like your grandchildren will read the scoreboard.
If this resonates, explore more of my writing at Numbers & Letters or reach out for a consultation to discuss how Mutualist principles can shape capital strategy inside your company or fund.
Sources & inspiration:
Wes Anderson - The Phoenician Scheme
The work of Michael Duncan
Disclaimer/Full Disclosure (You made it!): This blog post was generated with the assistance of AI, with N&L human oversight ensuring accuracy and insight. The thoughts and opinions expressed are our own.
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