This obscure bargain fueled the greatest wealth-creating engine in human history. However, under the current Administration, “capital” has been taken away from capitalism.

on recent conversation with Reuters, I warned that the White House and the SEC are effectively dismantling the machinery of our public markets. By threatening to roll back Regulation SK, refusing to settle shareholder resolutions, not allowing shareholders with less than $5 million to file exempt solicitations, and not requiring disclosure of material risks, they have transformed public corporations into private realms without accountability. The Administration has told the owners of capital—you, me, retirees, pension funds, and endowments—that there is nothing we can do. We are expected to write checks and not ask questions.

These unprecedented actions amount to usurping our property rights. This is blatant anti-capitalism.

When you buy a home, you have the right to a foundation inspection. If the government suddenly passes a law that says you are forbidden to ask if the house is built on a sinkhole, you will call it a violation of your property rights. But this is exactly what happened in our investment portfolios.

When the SEC tells shareholders that we can no longer ask about supply chain challenges, workforce instability, fundamental management, or explain to fellow investors the financial rationale for filing a shareholder resolution, they are blinding investors to material risk and from meeting our fiduciary duty.

Let’s call this attempt to keep shareholders in the dark for what it really is: the imposition of systemic ignorance.

Information is the lifeblood of efficient markets. Investors need data on price risk. If a company relies on a supply chain that is vulnerable to severe weather, or if it creates a work culture that alienates employees, that’s not “political” information – that material financial information. When the government abets irresponsible companies to combat these financial risks to shareholders, they are not protecting the companies; they are incubating a catastrophic collapse because you cannot manage a risk you are not allowed to measure.

Ironically, an Administration that claims to champion free markets is actively undermining the free flow of information that makes markets work. By insulating management from shareholder control, they created the conditions of 1929—a market built on opacity, speculation, and insider control.

We are already seeing the consequences. As US markets turn into black boxes, savvy investors are looking elsewhere. Europe and other world jurisdictions recognize that in modern capitalism, transparency is a competitive advantage. If the US continues a race to the bottom, capital will inevitably follow.

Investors don’t want to score political points. We want a return on investment. Getting there is much more difficult when the rules of ownership are rewritten to exclude owners.

The best management teams value shareholders and will continue to voluntarily measure and address relevant risks and offer material disclosures. Some companies, choosing to escape whatever they can, ghost the shareholders and barricade themselves without management, violating the trust that supports free markets. This division between companies that value investors and those that do not determines which public companies succeed and which fail in the long term.

It’s time for the investment community—from the largest asset managers to individual 401(k) holders—to demand that the SEC, the agency created to protect us, restore our basic rights. We must raise our voices to remind politicians in Washington that money goes where it is respected, and that there is no capitalism without capital.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of luck.