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Mark Cuban is a total idiot

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adrock3215

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If anyone saw his blog post titled "Tax the Hell out of Wall Street; Give it to Main Street" they would concur. In it, he says:

Tax every single share of stock that is bought and sold 10 cents per transaction. One dime. If you buy a share of stock, your brokerage pays a 10c tax. If you sell a share, your brokerage pays a 10c tax. 1 share, 100 million shares. Its 10 cents per share.

He goes on to list some figures, claiming that his plan would raise 52 billion dollars a year. But he gives no credibility to the fact that a transaction tax on the Street would cut volume significantly. My suspicion is that many traders would quit and many hedge funds would shut down. Some of these automated Blackbox hedge funds send hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of orders a day. With this tax, market participation would drop and the spread between bids and offers would be huge (hurting the longer term investors that he wants to protect).

If you scroll down you can see many people disagreeing with him in the comments section, and his responses. This really wrecks my opinion of Mark Cuban. Now I know that he is a grade A idiot.

The only explanation for this stupidity is that Cuban has gotten his ass handed to him in the markets within the last month. Maybe he was a Lehman shareholder. God knows how he got rich. I guess the sun shines on every dog's ass at some point.

Edited by adrock3215
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But he gives no credibility to the fact that a transaction tax on the Street would cut volume significantly.

Stocks can be bought and sold anywhere. Not just in any other stock markets, but outside of stock markets as well. I can buy a stock from you for whatever price we agree on and however many shares we want to trade. A tax on stock market transaction simply will kill the stock market.

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One does wonder how someone like this fool strikes it rich.
I would assume it's because he is a dedicated worker and thinks about his businesses all day long, every day. That is based on what I've read on his blog. He may not always have the best insight, and he may say stupid things sometimes, and he may even sometimes be a jerk, but that is different than knowing your business and making good decisions on its behalf.
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You're absolutely right. My question about how he got rich was probably more rhetorical than anything. I’ve met a lot of business owners who find something they enjoy and then they have a tremendous ability to focus on what they do well. Other aspects of their lives may be a train wreck, but they know their businesses.

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A tax on stock market transaction simply will kill the stock market.

Which essentially (although not entirely, as you pointed out) kills any hopes of buying and selling stocks. It is not feasible for me to obtain the telephone number of (say) every GE stockholder around the world, call each of them, and compile a list of prices they are willing to sell or buy at. I may be able to locate 3 or 4 GE stockholders and obtain their bids and offers, but of course they will probably not be to my satisfaction. I like the chances much better when there are hundreds of thousands of market participants and millions of buy and sell orders compiled in one place for my perusal.

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I like the chances much better when there are hundreds of thousands of market participants and millions of buy and sell orders compiled in one place for my perusal.

Which is precisely the purpose of having a stock market, and other kinds of financial markets.

But of fees or taxes for selling or buying stocks were too high, you could simply move to another market. There are plenty of stock exchanges all over the world.

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But of fees or taxes for selling or buying stocks were too high, you could simply move to another market. There are plenty of stock exchanges all over the world.

It isn't that simple, because Stock Exchanges are either privately run companies subject to heavy regulation, operated outright by a government, or organized as not-for-profits. I can't just trade whatever share of whatever company on whatever exchange I want. Each exchange has the authority to decide what stocks can and can not trade on its floor. Plus there is the pesky issue that each government tries to "protect shareholders and investors" by dictating various and sundry procedures for presenting financial statements (which may differ quite drastically from the US GAAP procedures).

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It isn't that simple,

I know. So it would play out like this:

1) US government enacts a fee on stock trading.

2) anywhere from a few months to a two years alter small companies and startups begin to list their shares in, say, European or Asian stock markets, eventually they remove their listings from US markets.

3) A bit later a big company, say GM or Microsoft, starts to list its shares in London or Tokyo

4) Some months afterwards other big companies follow

5) there's an outcry about American companies moving their capital offshore

6) Government intervenes again to make the scoundrels behave; grumbles about economic warfare from abroad.

Something like that.

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  • 1 month later...
HAAH, Cuban is being convicted of insider trading.

This guy is a total idiot. God knows how he made it. He's a total clown.

That don't make you a bad person. :lol:

He is sloppy though, he's not exactly a great thinker. He got lucky by selling his Internet startup just in time. He's been making mistakes ever since, and now he got caught with this crap: notice how it's always the amateurs that get caught with insider trading, never the real investment guys.

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Cuban's reply:

Mark Cuban today responded to a civil complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. In its complaint, the Commission charges that Mr. Cuban engaged in violations of the federal securities laws in connection with transactions in the securities of Mamma.com Inc.

This matter, which has been pending before the Commission for nearly two years, has no merit and is a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Mr. Cuban intends to contest the allegations and to demonstrate that the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division.

Mr. Cuban stated, “I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.”

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If anyone saw his blog post titled "Tax the Hell out of Wall Street; Give it to Main Street" they would concur.

(snipped for brevity)

If you scroll down you can see many people disagreeing with him in the comments section, and his responses. This really wrecks my opinion of Mark Cuban. Now I know that he is a grade A idiot.

That's unfortunate. I didn't think he was a full-blown Objectivist, but I thought that given his past comments, he had a basic sense of what AR had written about. Apparently, he's lacking in the ability to "lock down" philosophical concepts.

God knows how he got rich. I guess the sun shines on every dog's ass at some point.

Hi there, my name is God. :)

Cuban got rich by co-developing the RealAudio format back around 1997-98. (Apparently, sports radio is big business!)

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notice how it's always the amateurs that get caught with insider trading, never the real investment guys.

Michael Milken.

But you have my posts on auto-ignore so I won't say anymore. That's kind of all that needs to be said anyways.

Yeah Cuban is a moron, but it gets worse.

From Wikipedia,

Cuban is an admirer of Objectivist philosophy and author/philosopher Ayn Rand.[69] About Rand's novel The Fountainhead, he said: "[it] was incredibly motivating to me. It encouraged me to think as an individual, take risks to reach my goals, and responsibility for my successes and failures. I loved it."[70] His political views lean towards libertarianism.[71] However, he holds a position on the centrist Unity08 political organization's advisory council.[72]

I'm just going to leave that right there. :)

Edited by Mammon
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From Wikipedia,.... "Cuban is an admirer of Objectivist philosophy and author/philosopher Ayn Rand"
The Wiki is wrong about this, with the author misinterpreting what Cuban has said. At one point, I followed Cuban's blog and he is a fan of "The Fountainhead", and is broadly libertarian in wanting less government and so on. However, he is not an Objectivist unless we use the term in a way that makes many million people Objectivist. I'm not making some point about him not agreeing with some particular tenet of Objectivism. Rather, even the broadest concept of an Objectivist would be narrower than "people who read Fountainhead, admire the individualism, and want smaller government".

It is very tough to respond to the notion that he is an "idiot", because that term can be used to mean multiple things. Clearly he is not a person of low intelligence. If one reads his blog one finds someone who is trying to think things through at some level of abstraction. Also, if one believes what he says, he can work extremely hard on the concretes of something, once he is enthused about it, with great attention to detail. He does seem to be impetuous at times, and also brash and in-your-face when it does not seem to suit his long-term purpose.

Edited by softwareNerd
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By "idiot", I mean to say that his entire persona is a gimmick, just like the Dairy Queen stunt he did.

What happened is Mr. Cuban probably got caught on the wrong side of the market this year, and he wants Uncle Sam to step in and save the day. He was probably long financials. He thinks that because he made a bit of money in a particular business, that he is an authority on financial markets.

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ARC just published an Op-Ed on the topic:

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=New...le&id=21970

There is no reason to defend this clown. Here's a quote from the editorial:

"The Mark Cubans of the world deserve to be left free to make investment decisions under a government with clear laws against force, fraud, and breach of contract"

Ironically, Cuban himself is against this, as is evident from his tax proposal. Or maybe he's all for it, until he's on the wrong side of the market...

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There is no reason to defend this clown. Here's a quote from the editorial:

"The Mark Cubans of the world deserve to be left free to make investment decisions under a government with clear laws against force, fraud, and breach of contract"

Ironically, Cuban himself is against this, as is evident from his tax proposal. Or maybe he's all for it, until he's on the wrong side of the market...

This is nonsense. No one (not even an executive) is under some compulsory moral obligation or even a legal compulsion _to agree with_ the justification for a right in order to benefit from the relevant rights-protection, and this is leaving aside whether or not Cuban really is or is not in some professed alignment of a given legal or moral principle. If we were to hold society to that standard, then I'd imagine that an overwhelming faction of a given society would be headed for the courtrooms already. (Please understand that I'm not and wouldn't consider invoking some bizarre "lifeboat" scenario in order to context-switch; the point I'm making remains the same: The government is only obligated to protect rights, and this condition does not add additional restrictions, in turn, to the people to be protected.)

By the way, it occurred to me that someone could bring up the whole angle involving that "ignorance of a law doesn't bestow said person with exoneration of guilt". The related moral factor for this proposition is itself wrong-headed since, the legal burden should be on the gov't i.e. the force initiator in such cases. Unfortunately, given the thoroughly altruist nature of modern governments, most people think otherwise. That is, altruists tend to consider "guilt before innocence" in this respect at least. That moral tendency absolutely does dovetail with the motivation for this current SEC case. (I could read Chris Cox the riot act as well given his past...)

From what little I've gathered over the years as concerning Mark Cuban's career development, he's attempted to make an honest living through various enterprises. If someone wants to accuse him of harboring or exhibiting some eccentricities, then that may be another matter worth considering. Still, questionable behavior that doesn't violate individual rights is to be of no governmental concern, and that is precisely the point of the press release Kendall linked to.

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I think you read too much into what I said...

Still, questionable behavior that doesn't violate individual rights is to be of no governmental concern

This was exactly what I pointed out.

Cuban does not agree with this statement though. He thinks that government should violate individual rights by taxing stock transactions. The Op-ed says specifically, "The Mark Cubans of the world deserve to be left free to make investment decisions", but Cuban himself does not agree with this, at least in principle. That's the irony of ARI's defense of Cuban.

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I think you read too much into what I said...

This was exactly what I pointed out.

Cuban does not agree with this statement though. He thinks that government should violate individual rights by taxing stock transactions. The Op-ed says specifically, "The Mark Cubans of the world deserve to be left free to make investment decisions", but Cuban himself does not agree with this, at least in principle. That's the irony of ARI's defense of Cuban.

Two (quite separate) clarifications: the first refers to everyone, the second specifically to mr. Cuban and others like him.

1. What Cuban thinks is completely irrelevant to whether the US Government is right or wrong in prosecuting someone, anyone, for insider trading.

2. Since Mark Cuban is a productive member of society, it is in our rational self interest to speak up in his defence, when the gov.(or anyone else) is persecuting him., no matter what he believes in. End of Story.

If Mark Cuban were an enemy of freedom who will continue to destroy our individual rights, as soon as he escapes these charges, then there would be an irony in ARI's decision to defend him. (They obviously wouldn't defend such a person, even if he was being arrested for dealing drugs or insider trading-if this was Al Gore for instance, no one at ARI would care, in my opinion.)

However, he is not a religious leader or a political activist (environmentalist, socialist or multiculturalist), he is an investor and a businessman, so there is no irony: His dumb idea concerning something he's not involved with is not relevant. (btw. I'm sure someone will bring this up, so here's my answer in advance: Atlas Shrugged examples don't apply, because that world is still very different from ours)

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