No Good Billionaires

Taylor Swift, Mr. Beast, Lebron James, and the Myth of the Wealthy Altruist

In the interest of honesty, allow me to put my bias up front right away: I do not believe billionaires should exist – period, full stop, end of transmission. Seemingly, this is becoming less and less controversial as time and events alters the discourse of American politics for better and worse. There remains, however, a particularly prevalent thorn in the side of this position, especially for reformed liberals now shifting to leftism in the face of fascism. In the midst of the cognitive dissidence spurred by troubled times, these burgeoning lefties cling to an everlasting vestige of their now dead faith: the mythological creature known as the “Good Billioniare.”

 What is the Good Billionaire? In theory, the liberal might identify the Good Billionaire through two avenues: the accumulation of wealth through virtuous means; and the use of that wealth to virtuous ends. It helps, especially for the wandering liberal, if this billionaire identifies with them politically, at least superficially, as such efforts in political correctness help blur the otherwise bright lines of class. It’s one way for billionaires to say, “I’m just like you.”

To that, I quote a philosopher who needs no introduction: “They not like us.”

No, they most certainly are not. For one thing, on a bare bones level, there is no way a single individual can accumulate such outsized wealth without harming people along the way. As we’ll explore, that harm can be physical in nature, direct or indirect, but more often than not it comes in the form of the most enduring aspect of class dynamics: exploitation of the lower classes. This being true, the second defining characteristic of the Good Billionaire also falls flat. Can someone spend ill gotten gains virtuously? If so, how much theoretical good must one do to offset the good most definitely not being done with the billions being boarded up behind bank vaults and high-tech bunkers? When untold millions of people, many of which reside in their own country, their own states and cities, are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to feed their children and forestalling medical care because of affordability, when even two-income households all across America find themselves poor and deflated, how many ribbon cuttings or flashy acts of for-show morality can make up for a small sliver of the population hording more than half the nation’s wealth? “Let me ask you one question,” pondered Bob Dylan decades ago, “Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it should?”

 I’m not asking them, of course. They couldn’t care less. But they’d like you to think they do. So, the Good Billionaire lavishes money on their pet projects. F John D. Rockefeller it was building public works with his family’s name crudely plastered on the side. For YouTube personality Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) its paying for a few surgeries, throwing a stack or two at a unhoused person – provided the recipients agree to be featured in monetized content, of course. Jimmy Beast once made no secret of his mission in life: he wanted to go viral and get rich trying. In that venture, which started with a typical “Old YouTube” video of him counting to a million, he’s been quite successful, to the point where his style of maximizing ad value over the joys of creativity has rapidly helped to transform the Google-owned platform into an ad-plagued, heavily sanitized, overly brand safe outlet that props up large channels like Jimmy or his copycats at the direct expense of smaller creators. To be fair, YouTube was probably always headed down this route, but Jimmy has been a direct beneficiary of it, even bringing his schtick to Amazon Prime this past year. Today, Jimmy says his goal is to make money so he can make people’s lives better and portends to back that up with videos of him providing eye surgeries for the blind or “gifting” millions of dollars to strangers or, more commonly these days, to his friends.

The late owner of the New York Yankees and fellow billionaire George M. Steinbrenner once said, “If you do something good and somebody other than the person you did it for knows about it, you did it for the wrong reasons.” In the same vein, J.P. Morgan once gave us the maxim, “A man has two reasons for doing something, a good one and the real one.” For Jimmy the goal has always been wealth and influence. (He recently threw a public fit over being ranked just seventh in a Rolling Stone article of the most impactful influencers in the business.) He’s said in the past he’d like to be President of the United States one day and his philanthropy is meant to aid in that effort, to provide a sheen over the act of forcing a camera in the face of an unhoused individual and demanding they thank you for being so generous to them. Jimmy’s videos garner hundreds of millions of views, views that have made him a very rich man. Rich enough not to care when contestants on his Amazon Prime show suffer from deplorable conditions and were denied aid in the name of better content; rich enough not to understand how heartless it might be to monetize a video featuring a devastated contestant crying over the death of a close friend; and rich enough to openly engage in what appears on some level to be a pump and dump crypto scheme and then brag about the profits accrued while on a podcast with Logan Paul. Of the three Good Billionaires examined in this piece, Mr. Beast’s case study is easily the most textbook example of exploitation, but far from the only one.

Lebron James, the second-best player ever to play the game of basketball and the first billionaire athlete, talks a big game, having read at the least the first page of his “favorite book,” The Autobiography of Malcolm X. All jokes aside, James consistently demonstrates a genuine awareness of, and concern for, the extensive race issues plaguing America’s past, present and future. Regardless, it was Fred Hampton who said “theory without practice ain’t shit,” and Lebron’s class interests remain undeniable. In 2018 he was lauded for the opening of his “I Promise” school, which, as of 2025, still ranks among Ohio’s worst in student proficiency. Just a year later, James was a key part of the NBA’s efforts to silence then-Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey who dared to express support for those in Hong Kong protesting the escalated takeover of their island by China, another pseudo-fascist state. This wasn’t a case similar to that of Michael Jordan either, whose apolitical nature is famous – or infamous depending on who you ask. Lebron isn’t one to keep quiet when he feels strongly about things, he just felt very strongly that Morey should shut his mouth. Morey’s comments sent basketball-loving China into a tizzy, childishly suspending relations with the Houston Rockets and the NBA. James, who is not and has not ever been a part of the Rockets organization but is heavily invested in China as product spokesperson and a capitalist with a robust business portfolio, insisted that Morey’s support for pro-democracy efforts in Hong Kong were “misinformed.” The response by the NBA and James were panned by forces as disparate as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Senator Ted Cruz of Cancun, and South Park. By 2020, despite being named Executive of the Year just two years prior, Morey was dismissed by the Rockets organization and the NBA’s relationship with the Chinese government had reverted to normal. Hong Kong, however, will never be the same, having been absorbed completely into the Chinese state, it’s unique and vibrant democracy snuffed out before our eyes. But who needs democracy when brand deals are at stake?

And then there’s Taylor Swift, the largest pop star on earth and perhaps the holotype of the modern Good Billionaire. Swift is a fierce advocate for feminism, provided that feminism both suits, and centers on, her. She’s good for a half-hearted endorsement of a losing presidential candidate, or for using the work of millions of braver women over the centuries to bully critics into writing positive reviews of a poor album. Angela Davis who? Sojourner Truth what? No, for Swift feminism means immunity from criticism, be it about her deafening silence on Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza or her fiancé’s apparent support for the same president she told her supporters to vote against, the same president actively doing harm to millions of people of color, women, and working-class individuals all over the country and the world. Then of course there’s the meme of it all, her persistent and pernicious use of her private jet. Off the bat, I’ll concede that this issue is not at all unique to Taylor Swift. Air travel as a whole, even at the working-class level, is probably in need of rethinking if we are to ensure a healthier environment in the future. But that does not excuse Swift’s insistence on using her private plane to fly just a few minutes from an airport on one side of Los Angeles to an airport on the other side of the same city. I know Los Angeles lacks public transportation but come on. Swift’s use of her jet means she, as a single individual, has produced more polluting waste than the combined populations of some of the nation’s larger metropoles. Her own fans have voiced displeasure with the practice, hoping against hope that their chosen Good Billionaire will do the right thing and live up to the apparently liberal values they’ve come to expect from her. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t change. And why should she? Is she supposed to share the roads with us, the people she expects to purchase her music for a second or even third time? Is she supposed to deal with the same traffic we plebs do? A ludicrous suggestion, really, and one you wouldn’t ask of her if she were a man – or so she she’d like you to think.

These three figures – considered by one section of the public or the other to be “Good Billionaires” – help support some of the underlying myths of America. Taylor Swift is often portrayed as being “self-made,” just a girl from a Pennsylvania Christmas tree farm who made it big off her talent and a dream alone. Cute story, one meant to contrast starkly with the “Nepo Babies” of Hollywood who achieved fame because of their parents’ names and connections. Too bad it’s a total farce. In reality, Swift hails from immense wealth and her parents – a mutual fund marketing executive mother and a Merrill Lynch stockbroker father – were heavily invested (pun very much intended) in her career. By her own admission her parents gave her a unisex name so she would have an easier time in the business world; they were able to uproot one of her multiple childhood households to move to Nashville when Taylor was fourteen; they supplied her with talent agents, vocal coaches, and whatever else from a young age. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with parents supporting their child’s dreams, even if those parents might be accused of being obsessed with having a famous child. We should all be so lucky to be able to do the same for our children – and therein lies the problem. Very few of us can afford the privileges afforded to a child of Merrill Lynch. In fact, while Taylor was getting her start a great many children and young adults were forced to abandon their own hopes and dreams in the midst of the 2008 Financial Crisis precipitated by the likes of Merrill Lynch. How many would-be pop mega stars watched their ambitions go up and smoke, forced to settle for the drudgery of capitalist servitude, simply because they were put on their back foot while Taylor Swift got a massive head start. This isn’t a zero-sum game, either, and I’d be remiss if I gave the impression Swift achieved her fame over someone more deserving. The problem is painting Swift herself as self-made, alluding to the idea that she is more deserving than those who might have needed help to achieve a fraction of her success, and especially more deserving to those who “failed” because no help was forthcoming.

In all fairness, the term “self-made” is a capitalist myth, meant to delude the dreamers of the working class that success – even a minor success better categorized as “comfortable” or “content” – can only be achieved through hardship, through immense risk, and is therefore only worthy of dreaming of if you’re willing to sacrifice everything to get it. It disregards the very fact that in a complex economy virtually nothing is achievable by a single enterprising individual. Take, for example, Lebron James’s lifetime megadeal with Nike. James, unlike Swift, actually grew up poor in a single-parent household in Akron, Ohio. That part of his story is very true, as is most of the positive attributes of his rise to prominence. The issue apparent when we examine Lebron James is concerned less the sources of merit and more with the sources of money. When you watch an NBA game you are watching the product of thousands of people putting in countless hours of labor. When you wear a Lebron James sponsored Nike shoe or a poorly made Fanatics jersey, you’re wearing the result of labor performed by designers, manufacturers (often in the form of child or even forced labor), ship crews, longshoremen, truck drivers, salesmen, so on and so forth. The more merch Lebron and Nike sell the more money goes directly into their pockets. The same is not true for the longshoremen, the sweatshop seamstresses, the concession vendors and custodial crew at Crytpo.com Arena, or any of the other constituent parts of the supply chain whose wages stay flat and whose futures remain at the whims of tariff mongers and profit padders. A worker strike, for example, would impact Lebron James in the same manner it would Nike CEO Elliot Hill, ironic given that James is a union member. This is how class dynamics works to overwrite the divisions of race and gender, by uniting the interests of the very wealthy in contrast to the interests of the working class. That’s what incentivizes someone of a working-class background, having achieved the apotheosis to the One Percent, to neglect democratic protests in Hong Kong and later go on to vocally support Israel’s actions in Palestine, in the same way a mega monopoly like Disney can neglect concentration camps both in East Turkestan and the Florida Everglades. Benito Mussolini, the grand poohbah of fascism himself, said his ideology might better be termed “corporatism,” for fascism entails the merger of the corporation with the state.

But what about merging the corporation with the neighborhood, as was Mr. Beast’s intention when he purchased a spate of houses in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina in 2023? Like Henry Ford’s disastrous Fordlandia in Brazil or Milton Hershey’s pre-theme park town in Pennsylvania, Jimmy envisions a town where he and his friends, most of which work for him, can live and create content all the live long day. On the surface, it’s the same old philanthropy of the kindhearted YouTuber. In reality, it’s a return to the company town idea tried by the industrial robber barons of the First Gilded Age and the feudal system of serfs and lords before even that. Jimmy’s persistent use of money to incentivize strangers and friends to do outlandish things on camera is dubiously ethical at best – to deign to control your employees’ housing is downright dangerous. Everything becomes reliant on your boss not only employing you but liking you. You’re pressured – implicitly, but that’s all that’s necessary – to say yes to whatever is asked of you, regardless of what you might feel comfortable with, regardless of what is legal or illegal, moral or amoral. The same goes for the strangers appearing in his videos who may have no interest in seeing their low moments plastered on the internet but who begrudgingly agree to be used as content because a billionaire is waiving rent money in their face, promising to better their lives if they just look into the camera and cry about their medical bills before competing an obstacle course for a fraction of a fraction of Jimmy’s bank account. All the while Mr. Beast’s legion of young fans praises his “good deeds,” using them – as Jimmy does – as a shield against critique of his exploitation of others. No doubt, these young viewers make up a good portion of the constituency he hopes will one day send him to the White House, and towards even more power.

Nothing identified here is groundbreaking, nor is my intention to single these three individuals out as particularly repugnant relevant to the rest of their class. On the whole, all three are far more benign than more malevolent actors bearing the names Musk, Koch, Adelson, Walton, and Ackman, to name but a sampling. Rather, I wish to dispel the idea, long held by liberals who imagine our problems fixable by Great Men with good intentions; the idea that these issues are not systemic – and therefore do not require systemic change – but instead can be fixed when “good people” possess great resources to battle the “bad people” with equal or greater resources. This worldview positions the working class squarely in the middle, without agency, in no position to decide its own fate. It leaves the working class, and their future, as nothing but mere war booty to be fought over and divvied up by the elites whose immense power separates them entirely from the world their greed continues to destroy.

Make no mistake: the problems facing the United States and the world are systemic and no half measures or well wishes will be able to fix them. When liberals talk of the Good Billionaire they are hoping for half measures, hoping to treat a symptom without ever addressing the underlying conditions. They’ll put BLM or LGBTQ pins on their lapels as they turn their backs to the suffering of others, whether in occupied Washington DC or occupied Gaza. They want to keep their wealth and to do so they need us to believe they have our best intentions at heart, that they’re on our side. This is not unique to Lebron or Taylor Swift or Mr. Beast, it is a fundamental and defining aspect of their class, the capitalist class.