The philanthropic legacy of John Bogle

How billionaires give away their money is important.

How they make their money is more important.

Consider John Bogle, the founder of the investment giant Vanguard, who died last week.

As a donor, Bogle was no better than mediocre.

But he was a brilliant businessman and innovator. By popularizing low-cost index funds and setting up Vanguard so that it was owned by its mutual-fund investors, Bogle enriched millions of American investors. Bogle, arguably, did more good for the world than all but a few of the very biggest, smartest American philanthropists.

On Twitter, Elizabeth Warren saluted Bogle:

A bit of background: Index funds don’t pick stocks or try to outperform the market, which is all but impossible to do over the long run. Instead, index funds amass shares of all the companies in a given index — a group of big US companies, like the S&P500 Index, or broader collections of firms in indices that invest across the entire stock market, domestic or global. Index funds aim merely to…