Warren Buffett Says Peter Thiel Can Leave The Giving Pledge. That Was Always The Point.
Peter Thiel has been urging billionaires to reconsider the Giving Pledge, calling the philanthropic initiative an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club” and saying most signers he has spoken with regret joining. Warren Buffett, who helped create the pledge, has a remarkably uncomplicated answer for anyone who agrees with him: leave.
“If they don’t like it, they don’t have to belong,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick when she asked about the backlash from technology billionaires including Thiel and Marc Andreessen. “They can retire from it. They didn’t make a legal pledge anyway.” The exchange was recorded March 31 but surfaced again this week as the dispute over what billionaires owe society, and who gets to decide where their fortunes ultimately go, has become unusually personal.
Thiel never signed the Giving Pledge himself, but he has reportedly contacted roughly a dozen signers and encouraged them to reconsider. His most provocative intervention involved Elon Musk, who signed in 2012: Thiel warned that Musk’s fortune could eventually wind up supporting left-wing nonprofits selected by Bill Gates, transforming what began as an argument about generosity into one about whether wealthy people can trust institutions to preserve their intentions after they are gone.
That is a more serious objection than whether the Giving Pledge has become too “woke,” a characterization that came from Quick rather than directly from Thiel. The pledge asks billionaires to commit at least half their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills, but it doesn’t dictate the recipients, establish a common foundation or legally bind signers to follow through. Buffett’s defense rests precisely on that looseness.
Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates launched the initiative in 2010, and more than 200 wealthy people have since signed. Buffett says the experiment exceeded his expectations because some participants appear to have given more money, or given it earlier, than they otherwise would have. He never expected a signature to function like an enforceable contract.
That leaves an intriguing disagreement between two billionaires who are actually arguing about different things. Buffett measures the pledge by behavior while people are alive: if membership encourages even some wealthy people to become more generous sooner, it has worked. Thiel is preoccupied with control, particularly the possibility that institutions and successors can eventually redirect a fortune toward purposes its creator would have rejected.
The distinction becomes increasingly important as the fortunes created during the technology boom move closer to their own succession decisions. Giving away billions isn’t merely a question of generosity. A founder who wants money deployed over decades has to decide who will interpret the mission, how much discretion those people receive and what happens when the values of future trustees, foundations or family members no longer resemble the founder’s own.
Buffett has chosen a structure that accepts much of that uncertainty. He has pledged virtually all of his Berkshire Hathaway fortune to philanthropy, has accelerated gifts during his lifetime and has increasingly placed responsibility for the remaining wealth with his children. His approach depends less on controlling every future decision than on choosing people and institutions he trusts to make them.
Thiel’s objection exposes the opposite instinct. A fortune represents accumulated decision-making power, and giving it away eventually means surrendering some of that power to somebody else. The larger the fortune and the longer the intended philanthropic life, the harder it becomes to guarantee that tomorrow’s stewards will understand today’s intentions exactly as the donor did.
Buffett doesn’t pretend the Giving Pledge solves that problem. His answer is almost the reverse: it was never supposed to. The pledge creates social encouragement around giving without giving Buffett, Gates or anyone else authority over what another billionaire ultimately does with the money.
Thiel sees reasons to distrust the club. Buffett sees no reason anyone needs to remain in it.
For an initiative built around persuading extraordinarily powerful people to surrender wealth voluntarily, that freedom to walk away may be less a weakness than the principle holding the whole thing together.