Three episodes into the fifth season of Billions, the Showtime drama centered on a brash billionaire (Damian Lewis) and a hard-charging prosecutor (Paul Giamatti), Lewis’s character shows up at his son’s elite boarding school. He’s furious. The school is punishing his son for taking down a wide swath of the electric grid with a Bitcoin mining stunt, and Lewis can’t believe the headmaster’s temerity. He browbeats the bow-tied leader into dropping the punishment — blackmailing the man over a Syrian refugee program he secretly green-lit — and forces the headmaster to allow him to address the entire student body.

Lewis, clad in billionaire-cool-guy attire (jeans, black Nikes, zip-up sweatshirt), speaks from the stage of the school’s auditorium:

Your headmaster was kind enough to cede me the mic for this morning’s lesson, and I’m here to give you a little bit about what the school has been holding back from you: the goddamn truth — about Darwin, scarcity, and the world you actually live in. It’s not the warm, swaddled place your headmaster and your parents have told you about. It’s populated by people like me, who will tear you apart.

Nature didn’t select me — I selected myself, by harnessing my nature. My son wasn’t pulling a prank. He was trying to earn. And if he broke the school’s code, it’s because the code is wrong, asked him to go against the DNA which is telling each of you to be greedy, yes, be hungry — subjugate and conquer. Because that’s who we are. That’s what we are.

Capitalism harnesses that better than any other economic model on earth. Everything we have is because of capitalism, cause someone had an incentive to get up off his ass, to out-invent, to out-earn, yes, and to subjugate others — less capable, less intelligent, less ambitious, less lucky. To make those capitalistic dreams come true.