We should never believe billionaires when they talk about how much they want to make the world a “fairer” place. If they genuinely meant that, they probably wouldn’t be billionaires.
In recent years, we’ve all realized that those among the mega-rich who lean into activism are narcissists at best and sociopaths at worst. Despite all the soaring rhetoric, it’s all just a wokescreen to camouflage their avarice.
The growing list of self-motivated, self-congratulatory, progressive billionaires reads like a most wanted list: George Soros, Bill Gates, JB Pritzker — whose hypocrisy is so pronounced that Jon Stewart made fun of it last year. Mark Zuckerberg will give away as much money as he can to avoid paying taxes.
For me, the worst of the bunch has always been Mark Cuban, who wants to make the world a better place … after lying, cheating and stealing to get to the top of it.
Cuban is so far left in the Democratic camp that Politico wrote he carried the “Harris-Walz message more effectively than the Democratic ticket.”
Having helped the Democrats to their worst loss since Ronald Reagan, Cuban is now leading a full-time revolt against President Trump. He has publicly opposed the president’s America First policies, falsely claiming they would harm small businesses. He fearmongers that tariffs will lead to a crisis “worse than 2008,” attacks MAGA Americans, favors Silicon Valley over middle America, and wants AI to replace human workers. He continues to champion failed DEI programs, even while the rest of corporate America rejects them.
He even picked a fight with Jordan Peterson!
All this from a guy who made his billions successfully avoiding the consequences for his (alleged) insider trading, Ponzi schemes and libel. Cuban launched companies and PR campaigns to “expose fraud,” but used it to short stocks and profit from the negative press he created. He bragged about making “a f*** ton of money” shorting companies before publishing damaging reports about them. Critics called it market manipulation disguised as journalism, accusing him of abusing media power for personal enrichment. Even if legal, the practice blurred ethical lines and should call into question his motives for anything he does with attacking business models.
Although he carried the flag for America’s first! female! president! (Kamala Harris), Cuban was happy to ignore decades of sexual harassment at the Dallas Mavericks, which he’s had an ownership stake in for 25 years.. When 15 women brought legitimate harassment claims against hand-picked CEO Terdema Ussery, Cuban told his staff, “Don’t make a bigger issue out of it than it is.” At least, that’s according to an independent investigation of more than 200 Mavericks employees.
Unable to get his house in order, Cuban is on crusade after crusade to “save the world.” He insists how much he wants healthcare to be affordable, while wading into it for his own profit. His Cost Plus Drug Company aims to “screw” pharmacy benefit managers — the organizations that negotiate for lower drug prices from Big Pharma — pushing for their elimination without any alternative.
Cost Plus Drug Company replaces an already functioning system with another one — his — while further marginalizing brick-and-mortar community pharmacies. Cuban wants to replace PBMs with his online-only, cash-based model.
It’s preposterous that a billionaire would advance a for-profit industry with one hand while pretending to help people with the other. It’s the biggest healthcare policy charade since Barack Obama promised that Obamacare wouldn’t add “one dime to the deficit.” This one-size-fits-all agenda will do for community pharmacies what Amazon did for labor standards.
Now, of course, many among the very rich have performed wonderful acts of altruism, but Cuban only cares about power. If they wanted to make the world a better place, they could pay their taxes instead of just insisting they’d like to pay more. A billionaire who says he wants to make the world a “fairer” place is lying — he wants the world to be even more unfairer for him.
