FULL TRANSCRIPT: Mark Cuban on TRUTH Podcast With Vivek Ramaswamy

I don’t feel so stupid at all.” But you know, pigs get slacked, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, right? I mean, I had a B next to my name. It was more money than I ever dreamed of.

Mark Cuban’s Wealth Growth

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And was that the principal source of your wealth that you’re sitting on today, or have you actually compounded more since?

MARK CUBAN: No, no, I’ve made a lot more since then. Yeah, I mean-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Since that trade, all right. Yeah, what’s accounted for that? I mean, investing, yeah.

MARK CUBAN: Amaz were a big chunk, because that was another multi-billion-dollar sale.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I mean, it went up, it was multiple relative-

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, because I bought it for 2.85, and I sold my chunk for 3.5.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You bought your chunk for 2.85 and sold your chunk for 3.5?

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, give or take, yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. That’s good.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Not bad. Did you buy that chunk of the year that you did your Yahoo exit to?

MARK CUBAN: Yeah.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Did they have the accelerated depreciation back then for the 14s?

MARK CUBAN: I don’t remember. There were depreciation benefits, but I don’t remember the exact tax-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, got it.

The Sniff Test for Value

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So you got, we’ll get to politics in a second, but one of the things I find so interesting is you clearly have value instincts, right? I mean, I think that these are, there’s different types of investors, different types of entrepreneurs, but it’s like what I call the sniff test for value, right?

Do you know what I’m talking about? Like, where do you get that?

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, for sure.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Where do you get the sniff test?

MARK CUBAN: I mean, I’m a geek. My skill set is, you know, I can take, Steve Jobs said, “Everything’s a remix when it comes to technology,” and that’s what I’m good at, right?

So I started off my first company, MicroSolutions. I taught myself how to program, program for eight years, did systems integration, meaning I’d write software, we’d connect into local and wide area networks. And we were one of the biggest in the country at that time, and I sold it to CompuServe, which was owned by H&R Block. And then I took that and I started trading stocks because I understood how all the networking technology worked. And I mean, I killed it. I just killed it.

I was making 80, 90% a year trading technology stocks. Because like you said, when you understand something, like you understand biotech, right? And once you understand it, you know that most people are trading on technicals, on emotion, you know, on, you know, value proposition, Fund life, running out, whatever it is, you know. Whatever it may be, right?

But when you understand what’s happening behind that drug, and you understand the possibility of it being approved or not approved, and then the impact and the market for it, you have an edge. And that was the same edge I had. And literally, I took our, we took my trading success, created a hedge fund and sold it within nine months for more money. And then-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You sold the hedge fund?

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, like in nine months, it was like-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Who’d you sell it to?

MARK CUBAN: It was some guy who bought it.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Okay, got it. And so it’s actually, it’s really interesting what you say.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Biotech Success

So I’ll just, I don’t really talk about my business background as much, but actually, it’s kind of interesting today. Do you know much about the premise of the biotech company I founded, Roivant?

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, well, you go up, you know, a big company would have some product or some drug, they couldn’t get it approved, or they didn’t see the market for it. They spent a ton of money doing all the preliminary work. You would come in and grab it and say, “Look, I can get this approved for a lot less money than this big company was going to sell. We get it through the FDA and all the trials, which I can do more cost effectively. And then either I’ll market it, or I’ll license it or sell it to somebody else and make a shitload of money.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And they get a small piece of the action.

MARK CUBAN: Welcome to the American way, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right, exactly. And you know, what’s shocking is people don’t, like, if you’re not in it, you don’t, you got to think that you’d make this stuff up, which is that a pharma company that’s developed this drug and put hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes many hundreds of millions of dollars in, what will usually happen is they’ll have a new CEO. You got to love it when a new CEO comes in for a giant company.

MARK CUBAN: Because it doesn’t fit, yeah, it doesn’t fit his vision, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It doesn’t fit our strategy, right? And all the pharma companies like to do the same things at the same time, because they used to hate cancer back when I became a biotech investor. Now they all love oncology, but they leave the other area, women’s health or whatever, behind.

And so Roivant’s whole thing is, okay, it’s sitting on your shelf, all right? We’ll take it for pennies on the dollar. This was back when I was running the company. We’ll take it for pennies on the dollar, but you get a royalty or an equity stake in the drug.

MARK CUBAN: Because you’re going to mitigate the risk for you, right? Because you are going to have to spend a lot more money. The big company is going to have to spend a lot more money. They’re not going to be nearly as effective or as efficient or quick to market as you are. You get to be very precise on what you do, because it’s your only focus. It’s not going to be 3% of a $50 billion portfolio. It’s everything, your focus, which is business 101.

Yeah, so it was pretty obvious what you were doing, but most people don’t have the balls to go out there and do it.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I mean, my only advice would be in biotech, and this is interesting, is if you did it with one drug, then you are just taking massive risks. But my point is, this ARB exists across the board.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: MARK CUBAN: Yeah, and that’s what it is, an ARB, right? Do a whole portfolio, right? That’s healthcare right now to this day. It is. Healthcare remains this, because it’s so regulated. And the fact that it’s a regulated industry creates a lot of these market inefficiencies. The FDA process for developing drugs is highly regulated. It creates a lot of these inefficiencies. So the only thing is, some of the drugs we developed didn’t work, and that was part of the plan, right?

Right. Is you’ve got to develop a portfolio.

MARK CUBAN: Not part of the plan, but it’s part of the result.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, you’ve got to expect, yeah. You plan for the reality that some of them aren’t going to work, right? That’s a portfolio. But if you actually believe in that inefficiency, do it enough times, you have more than enough successes. That’ll pay 10 times over for your failures.

MARK CUBAN: As long as you said, what was the term you used? As long as you have that vision to see what’s going to work, and that vision comes from doing the homework.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, exactly.

Approaching the Business Debate

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So this is where I loved learning about you. So I was a kid at the time when you were sort of doing this.

MARK CUBAN: Thanks a lot.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But, you know, just to age you a little bit now. But I think it’s pretty cool. You still have a young spirit. So I was graduating in 07, but your story around 2000s would be one of these things where I was in biology. I didn’t really study. I didn’t come from the world of business when I entered hedge funds, but you read a lot. You sort of study up quickly. And I remember studying up on the hedges you put on. It was interesting. So I would think that you and I are going to have really similar perspectives, certainly on private market inefficiency, bureaucracy, taking advantage of capitalism, the American way.

MARK CUBAN: 100%. I think we’re on the same page there.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So then I started seeing it a couple of years ago, and this is where we, I think, maybe begin to have some differences of opinion, where you, I think, end up on the, let’s just say, the stakeholder capitalism side of the business debate, right? The, call it for lack of better description, the pro-ESG, the pro-diversity.

MARK CUBAN: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Let’s not go too far, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right.

MARK CUBAN: I always look at it, what’s best for my business? And if it’s good for my business-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I agree with that. I agree with that.

MARK CUBAN: So if it’s good for my business, I’m not going to ask anybody to legislate it, but I’m going to tell you what’s good for my business. ESG is one way to categorize it.

But to me, as it applies to ESG, you have young kids, right? And so there’s an understanding, and my kids were younger back then, there’s an understanding that you have to ask as a parent, what is the world your kids are going to live in, right? And to me, I believe climate change is real. I believe it’s man-made. And if that is the case, I’m going to be pro for anything that mitigates that risk.

Because there’s nothing more important to me in the value chain, right, in my risk analysis and dealing with probability, than what’s going to create the best world for my kids. That’s it.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yes, I’ll say a word about my own views on climate change. We don’t have to debate this, because the more important part is the business part, although we can debate the climate change part, too.

So do I believe global surface temperatures are going up? Yes, I do. Do I believe that there are man-made causes that may be playing a role in that? It appears plausible that that could actually be the case. However, I do not believe that that is anywhere near an existential risk for humanity.

MARK CUBAN: Let’s just talk probability. Okay, go ahead.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Just a couple of facts. You can put probabilities around it. But if you look at the hard realities, are eight times as many people die of cold temperatures today rather than warm ones. The earth is now covered by more green surface area today than it was a century ago, because carbon dioxide is actually sustenance, plant food, effectively. And the right answer to all of these temperature-related deaths, cold or hot, is more abundant and plentiful access to energy, which requires fossil fuels.

MARK CUBAN: What if you’re wrong? Because we don’t know. Nobody knows for certain, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I can engage with that. I can engage with that, right? Because I think that’s a legitimate… Even if there’s a 1% chance you’re wrong, how do you know? My only answer to that is, you could be wrong in both directions, right?

MARK CUBAN: Of course you can. But in my case, it costs money. In your case, my kids could be French fries and their kids could have no chance.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So that debate’s going to go on for a really long time. And I’m super interested in that. I’ve got a book coming out later this year, evaluating all of the different angles on this for part of that.

The Business Perspective on Climate Change

The part I’m interested in, though, for the business point, okay? Why should it be an individual business or a CEO that takes into account what they’re doing for their own business to address climate change? Wouldn’t that not make your business less competitive relative to Chinese peers? None of them, by the way, give the first care about climate change.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, not necessarily. I know what you’re saying, though, right?

China has a 50-year horizon when they make decisions, right? We have a three-month horizon when a lot of our businesses make decisions. The reason as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, you want to care is you want your kids to live in a world that they can thrive in. And even if there’s a 99% chance I’m wrong, which I think is far greater that I’m right, and that’s where we disagree. But even if I’m wrong, it costs money, right? And money is valuable. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been broke as much as I’ve been rich.

Maybe not as much, but I’ve been broke a lot, right? And for my kids, that’s everything. And their kids and their potential kids, right? And it’s just not worth the risk. So when I have a discussion with yourself or somebody else who’s like, I can’t believe we have to pay off for all this stuff. And in China, in India, and all these other countries, the pollution just runs rampant.

And so my answer to that is, first, you have to accept the fact that it’s a risk, right? A greater than zero probability that man-made climate change could really have a catastrophic impact on the world. And if you believe that and you start working in that direction, then if you’re a geek like I am, and you trust technology and investing in it, then you can say, you know what? As long as we’re working in that right direction, all these CEOs who are smart and start looking at potential solutions to be net zero or making investments in carbon capture or sequestration, whatever it may be, now there’s a chance we can solve the problem and get to a point where it’s not an imposition on every CEO around the world.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: See, look, I think the “what if you’re wrong” framing is a good question to ask in all directions, 360 degrees.

MARK CUBAN: But it’s not a money question, right? Because it’s not a money question. It’s even, look, even if this is, let’s just say, man, climate change is not man-made, right? It’s not man-made. And temperature is because we’re just in this cycle. For whatever reason, God’s cycle says, the average temperature in Minnesota in 16 years is going to be 120 degrees. We don’t know.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It happened through history. But here’s my point about the hubris of this, right? It is something I’ve joked around. I’m offering this more tongue-in-cheek, but as a thought experiment. Could you imagine a movie, a dystopian movie we’d make for the future, okay? Maybe we can co-produce this where we are 200 years in the future.

MARK CUBAN: You know, I’ve been nominated, movies I’ve been a producer, I’ve been nominated, I’ve been nominated for seven Academy Awards.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Is that right? I didn’t know that. So I’m an executive producer on a movie that’s coming out in September, which is actually about the challenging issue of child trafficking in the United States. America, I think it’s good. I’ll send you a copy and I would love your feedback before it comes out, if you have that kind of experience. But I’m not serious about making the next film I’m talking about, but I could be persuaded.

200 years from now, we are churning up coal plants that we have shut down because we’re facing a looming ice age. And remember, in the 1970s, if you look at the cover of Newsweek or Time Magazine, I’m not kidding you, there were cover magazines.

MARK CUBAN: No, I know, sure. I was a lot back then, remember?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I was a lot back then. That was back when you were broke.

MARK CUBAN: That was back when you were broke. Right, definitely broke.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m just, yeah. Longer wits than broke. But the reality is, that was actually the concern of the climate scientists as recently as 40 to 50 years ago. So the hubris to think that now, because we’re going to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.

MARK CUBAN: But you know one thing that you, but I think we agree on.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Not just on the temperature, but on the effects for humanity, or how many people. Lack of energy access in the meantime.

MARK CUBAN: If we go back to the 70s, we can agree that the number one technological tool was an IBM 360, right? Which is not as powerful as your phone is today. That just the technological advances we’ve made in computing power, in connecting computing power together, in cloud computing, in AI. There’s so many tools that are available today.

You can’t be shocked when they were wrong back then. And those tools only continue to improve. So you know in the drug development business, all the work that’s being done in AI to try to determine which molecules will work to create drugs better, et cetera, right? And so the same thing applies to climate change.

So while it’s great to say you can go back 50 years and say the predictions over population, we’re going to freeze. Of course there were a lot of insane predictions back then.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But they were saying but for carbon dioxide emissions. They recognized carbon dioxide emissions as a problem.

MARK CUBAN: That’s fine. That’s fine. It’s fine. So you create awareness of issues, and that’s the beauty of technology. Hopefully we get smarter and smarter and smarter, and the tools become better. And where we are today is where we’re at.

And what I can tell you from my own investments, looking and working with guys like Chris Sacca to say, OK, this could really f**k us all up. You have kids. I have kids. Vivek has kids. What can we invest in so that in the event it truly is man-made, in the event that we have no control, which we don’t, over companies around the world that are polluting left and right, what tools can we create? And maybe some of those tools end up only being capable to the point like we have to keep the temperature below this certain number, right? You just don’t know what the parameters are going to be. So you’ve got to try to improve them all.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: One area of common ground is because you use the word polluting. I think clean air and clean water is a totally separate issue, which I’m unambiguously defending.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, clean energy is a good thing, right? You could argue about…

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I mean, clean air and clean water, right? The air you breathe and the water you drink, right? You could deal with that issue entirely independently of whatever you believe is going to happen to global surface temperatures or the climate.

The Diversity and Inclusion Debate

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Okay. So the climate issue, we just touched on there. What about the diversity issue, right? This is the one where… Yeah, because you and I, for people who don’t know, we were actually… This conversation came out of… So we weren’t on social media, but we’re in a signal chat group, which actually is interesting. I find you could actually have better conversations there than somehow it doesn’t work that way on social media.

MARK CUBAN: Right, because you’re not performing for millions of people.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, but also just the nature of even the format. I don’t know. That’s something I’ve got to think about because modern social media is not conducive to conversation, right? But I think productive…

MARK CUBAN: For sure.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But anyway, we had an exchange, right?

So let me give you, without using the word DEI, because it’s just so tired. You can use DEI, that’s fine. I don’t like using it because it causes… Especially for somebody I might disagree with.

MARK CUBAN: I like using it. I got no problem with it, even though it pisses people off. It makes it more fun.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, let’s use DEI then. Fine.

So let’s say in the name of DEI, right? Pfizer… This is the example I gave you. We started talking about it. Pfizer sets a target. You can call it a quota, call it a target. Pfizer sets a target, but it is a very precise numerical target And this is not picking on one company.

MARK CUBAN: Well, it’s percentage. It was a percentage, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, they’re in an industry that I know well, but this is representative of…

MARK CUBAN: And I know that industry well too.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right. So it’s an industry we both know well, so we’re picking this example, but this is not unique to Pfizer Healthcare. It’s true across every other industry.

MARK CUBAN: IBM has done it, others have done it.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right, right. Something to the effect of… And people can look at the exact what it is, but the punchline is 32% or so was the number for minorities in certain corporate vice president levels or above.

I get it approximately right, look up exactly what the details, but suppose it’s 32% in vice president level, corporate executives or above by a certain year in the future. That’s a corporate target that they have set. It’s my belief, right, that these types of demographic goals, if that’s your basis for setting a target, that that is incompatible with pure meritocracy.

MARK CUBAN: Absolutely not.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, and that’s why I know you disagree, right? So give me your view.

MARK CUBAN: Sure. So targets are one thing, right? They’re not a quota. If it was a quota, you would be able to… Let me take a step back. There are these things called EEOC reports, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: People Employment Opportunity Commission, that’s what it is, yeah.

MARK CUBAN: Right, where they actually have to disclose the numbers for those vice president positions by male, female, white, black, Asian, other races, and biracial, right? And so they have to disclose them, and not all companies do. They have to report it, they don’t have to disclose.

Not all companies do, but Pfizer does. And when you go and actually look at the numbers on the EEOC report, they’re nowhere close to those targets. And in fact, in some years, they actually reduced the number of people you would think would benefit from DEI, right, based off of the traditional DEI views.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And that’s accurate. Well, you just said it’s accurate. It’s fact. So why bother to specify that target or goal in the first place? Because your point is, they’re not even meeting it. And you’re right about that in many companies.

MARK CUBAN: Let me just say, when you say they’re not meeting it, that’s just confirmation that it’s not a quota. Because a lot of people will take that number and project that as a quota. Why would they do it? It’s a quota, but they never meet it. None of the companies ever meet it. It’s a target.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So what’s the purpose of setting that goal on the basis of race or gender in the first place, Mark?

MARK CUBAN: First, when you talk about portfolio management in your company, right, and you talked about you’re going to have failures, and you’re going to have successes, and you probably had a target for your return on equity that you wanted to get, right?

And so you said, I’ve raised this money. I’m investing this money. We’re going to have hits and misses. And our target return is 23%. Same thing, right? Good companies look at their employees as capital, right, as intellectual capital. And where you want to have a better portfolio outcome for your intellectual capital, there’s certain things that you want to see happen.

One of them is diversity. And now when I talk about diversity, and I’ve put this up on Twitter, that means going out there and just like you look for the best ARBs across all bio companies, right, you didn’t care where they were, where they were located, looking for the best employee, the most capable employee meets turning over rocks where other people don’t look. And you probably found some of your best deals by looking where others don’t look. And I found some of my best employees by looking where others don’t look.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I agree with you so far, but why denominate it based on race? Why take this top down category that, and I’ll tell you why it gets under my skin is, I think it causes us to be more divided when we see each other on the basis of our…

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, okay, so let’s go to your point, right? Let’s go to your question. Let’s just say I’m looking at a drug company, Roivant, how did you pronounce your company name?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Roivant was my first company.

MARK CUBAN: Roivant, right. So I have Roivant. And I recognize that for cancer drugs, they’re all ignoring them. Everybody’s ignoring cancer. So I’m going to set a target for cancer drugs, because I know everybody else isn’t looking there. They’re missing it. And so I’m going to go where these cancer drugs are being made, where they’re not making enough an investment in them. And I’m going to go to focus, not necessarily focus there, but I’m going to extend my reach or my look to include those cancer drugs from companies I think don’t do a good job of figuring out the value in that drug.

That is what D in diversity is. It’s saying, look, there’s a lot of women, Black, Asian, whatever it may be, people that I think are not being recruited, that there are a lot of people who may not have the best test scores from the best school, but they may have a lot of soft skills from their experiences. And I’m going to go out and I’m going to find-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: What’s the E?

MARK CUBAN: Okay, let me finish this point, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yep, yep.

MARK CUBAN: Okay, so I’ll get to the E, right? I’m going to go and find the best possible candidates that I can. And they’re going to compete with everybody else. Just like when you at Roivant, you compete with your cancer drugs, have to compete a potential return for the non-cancer drugs, right?

And so in my diversity, when I go out and I look at this, I’m going to say this person, this woman, African-American woman who was from this small school that I’ve never recruited at, she’s brilliant. And when I compare her to other people that I might hire, she’s better.

Now, this other one, this other person, African-American, another small school I typically don’t recruit at, they may not be good enough. I’m not going to hire them just because they’re Black from a small school that nobody else recruited at. They have to qualify. So then when I hired this African-American woman from this small school, because she has amazing soft skills, maybe not the best test scores, that’s where equity comes in, right? Equity means putting people in a position to succeed, giving them the tools that they need.

So she might have soft skills that… I invested in this company called Scoutible, right? Scoutible.com. And all they do is they have people play these games. And when you play the game and thousands and thousands and thousands of people have played the game, it helps you. Based off the results in the path you take, they’ll compare them to other successful people in other vertical areas, right? Programming, bio, and they’ll look for similarities. They’ll do a statistical analysis and they’ll say, look, this person who we found in the middle of nowhere doesn’t have a computer science degree, but the soft skills that they have matches up perfectly to our best programmers. So we’re going to take a chance on that person.

And the equity is, the E in equity says, we’re going to give them extra computer training because we know based off of the data that we’re using, they’re very capable in ways other people aren’t going to find the diversity. And we’re going to give them the tools to put them in a position to succeed.

Whether or not they will succeed is up to the ability of us to train that person and up to their ability to live up to what we expect with them. If they don’t, they’ll get a chance or two, like every other employee, they’ll get a report from HR saying, here’s what you got to do if you’re not doing well. And you still have to compete and you still have to do well.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Here’s my own view on getting to the best answers on anything, right? You got to try on the other side, like a set of clothes, trying the best argument for those, like a set of clothes. And if it fits, you keep it. And if it doesn’t, you put it back on the rack. You iterate.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, you iterate.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m appreciating. I appreciate a lot of what you laid out. I think it’s an interesting perspective. I’m doing my best to try it on. I’ll tell you why for me, it feels like it doesn’t fit.

MARK CUBAN: Okay. Sure.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Is when I look at the results. Now here’s where you can measure the results. I’ll give you a couple of examples. So I’ll give you a couple of examples in response. One is one of the areas where you look at results of whether you believe you have actually have a true meritocracy or not, where you could actually get the actual numbers to do this is when you apply that same philosophy to the level of universities.

MARK CUBAN: So I know you’re talking about it from the level of capital.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Two different worlds.

MARK CUBAN: Two different worlds. I see you have different views then.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You do have different views. Yeah. Look, I think when you, I’ve said this a number of kids who are like Asian kids who can’t get into university because they got a 1600 on their SAT, good at sports, good at musical instruments and can’t get to the end of their, even their safety school. That is a direct product of a lot of the targets, even not hard quotas, but soft targets that these universities have set.

MARK CUBAN: Academics are different because the goal is different.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So we’re already on the same page there. All right.

MARK CUBAN: So you’re agreeing with me that DEI. So first of all, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. You’re agreeing with me that DEI is good for business.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: No, I’m not agreeing with you there.

MARK CUBAN: I didn’t hear any.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, because I was going to go to the universities, but it sounds like we agree on the universities, but let me, let me, let me.

MARK CUBAN: Look, if it were up to me, universities.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So I think here’s what I would say is on your definition of DEI and the way you define it, which I believe is quite different and far more sympathetic to me, at least than the accounts that you might hear from other proponents of capital D, capital E, capital I, but on your telling of it, my pushback would not be that I disagree with a lot of what you said, but that it then makes DEI redundant.

Okay. Because if you’re running a business, well, let’s just go back to that sole metric that you evaluated in the first place, which is maximizing your return on equity. If that’s your actual metric that matters, there are a million different targets that need to roll up into that. And of course, and it’s different for different companies, right? So my view is it’s got to fall out of the mission. It’s going to be mission driven by the company.

So every company, just to make sure we get the view on the table. Because it’s not the classical disagreement. It’s just a slightly different type of disagreement. So let’s say your company has a mission. Okay. I’ll give you a good example. Actually, this will be very personal to me.

Let’s say your mission is that you’re a steakhouse. Okay. And you want to serve your steakhouse chain and you want to serve good, high quality steak to your customers. Like any business, you’re going to need different types of diversity to make your business successful.

There are certain types of diversity you want, certain types of diversity you don’t want. The kinds of diversity you want, you might want people who are good waitstaff. You might want people who are good at the cash register. You might have good managers, a good chef. Okay. Even the kind of diversity you want, I would add a lot of diversity to the ranks of a steakhouse. I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a vegetarian. I’m a vegetarian on principle. It’s a part of my religious upbringing.

MARK CUBAN: I’m pescatarian. I’m pescatarian.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I don’t believe in killing animals for culinary pleasure. It just happens to be a family belief of mine and that I’ve raised in and that I raised my kids in as well. I respect the right of the steakhouse to go pursue its own mission. I don’t think the government should be stopping them from doing it.

But even though I would add diversity to the ranks of the steakhouse, I don’t think that that would necessarily make them better because it doesn’t align with their mission. So every business has to ask itself what kind of work.

MARK CUBAN: So wait, wait, wait, wait. So you’re saying because you’re vegetarian, how would they add you to the, how would you,

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I would add diversity.

MARK CUBAN: So my point is I would add diversity where —

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Diversity of thought to a steakhouse, right? But I wouldn’t be a good employee cause I’m not aligned with the mission.

MARK CUBAN: Come on, Vivek, come on, come on.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: The point I’m making is different types of businesses need different types of diversity. That’s the whole thing. So how could it be that every business that’s the same quota or same target based on race or gender when in fact every business should say, we need this type of diversity. People have experience with humanities or math.

MARK CUBAN: They do.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And they already do by focusing on return on equity instead of focusing on actual D capital D.

MARK CUBAN: They go hand in hand. They go hand in hand because that CEO, if they can’t hit their equity goals, right? There are ROE goals. They’re getting fired, right?

They go hand in hand. That’s what it comes down to. The ROE goals, the return on equity goal, which means there’s a million factors you’ve got to cover. Why do you want one blanket, one blanket category of diversity?

MARK CUBAN: It’s not one blanket strategy. No CEO would have a clue.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Because it’s the same race and gender. Race and gender is what it always comes down to or sexuality now too. People talking about diversity. So I’ll give you a good example. So your business, you sold your business in Yahoo. They’re listed on the NASDAQ, right?

MARK CUBAN: NASDAQ or they were.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So NASDAQ in making some of the arguments you have says they want companies to report the diversity of their boards of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Now, when proposing that rule, the SEC, which I know is one of your favorite government agencies, but the SEC has to approve that because NASDAQ is an exchange. All right.

That means they require what they call notice and comment from the public. So people have to provide comment on the rules. So they get some suggestions. They say, Hey, you’re asking companies to report their diversity on race, gender, and sexual orientation. How about we add a couple of other metrics to the list? Veteran status, disability status. I don’t remember if they said political beliefs or not, but veteran status and disability status are on there. And suppose political beliefs are also on the list.

Here’s what NASDAQ came back and said. Okay. After careful review, we have determined that the addition of more indices of diversity have the result of reducing the desired forms of diversity. So what does that say? It says that every company should be evaluating for itself what kind of diversity matters for each of them.

MARK CUBAN: And you just told me the example that they did. You gave an example of where they did, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Which is what do you mean?

MARK CUBAN: You said NASDAQ. NASDAQ wanted to have ESG type parameters.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: For any company that lists on NASDAQ, they tell us race, gender, and sexual diversity. NASDAQ said that, right? For the companies that are listed and traded on NASDAQ.

MARK CUBAN: So NASDAQ is a public company now, but it has its own CEO. It has its own board of directors. So they made the determination that it would be in the best interest of their business, right? They went to the SEC to get comments, correct? The SEC came back and expanded those. The NASDAQ said that works counter to what our goal is.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But this is not for NASDAQ as a business. This is NASDAQ’s listing standards for any company that’s trading on the NASDAQ.

MARK CUBAN: Right, but it’s their business who gets to determine. NASDAQ competes with the New York Stock Exchange. NASDAQ competes.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But the point is, if it was actually, of course, they compete with a different exchange. So people go to the New York Stock Exchange or a new exchange that would form.

MARK CUBAN: Or no exchange, yeah.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But the reality is, do you believe that NASDAQ’s own, because this is all in the name of BI, do you think that their goal for every company, right? You have how many companies listed on the NASDAQ? A thousand companies, whatever it is. Hundreds of companies.

MARK CUBAN: There’s only like 5,000 total public companies now, and that’s a problem. That’s a different conversation.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Actually, we do make it a lot harder to be a public company. Let’s say hundreds of companies on the NASDAQ, right? Let’s say hundreds of companies on the NASDAQ.

MARK CUBAN: A couple thousand, yeah.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So in that case, why would for those several, let’s say a couple thousand companies on the NASDAQ, why would it be the case that only those three parameters of capital D diversity are interesting? Race, gender, and sexual orientation for all 2,000 companies, as opposed to NASDAQ could have done this, which is to say that provide what type of diversity advances your own business’s mission and provide that disclosure to your investors.

That’s not what they said, which suggests to me, and I suggest, I think, to a lot of people who have issues with this movement, that it’s not really just about making each business run better. It’s also about accomplishing some other social objective that has nothing to do with the business. And maybe it’s a good social objective, but it’s-

MARK CUBAN: Right. Okay. But you’re contradicting yourself. You’re contradicting yourself in so much of this. You are, because NASDAQ is a company that’s trying to make as much money as possible and to compete, and to compete with the New York Stock Exchange, exchanges overseas, and not listing at all, just being over the counter. Right?

They, in their own wisdom, for better or worse, like every other CEO and board of directors, decided, maybe they decided, I can’t speak for them, that by doing this, that will give more incentive for companies to list with us. That is the American way.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: That’s a fair response. That’s a fair response.

MARK CUBAN: That’s a fair response. It is the only response.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It is the only response. Let’s continue pulling on the string.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, yeah. Let’s keep pulling on the string, though. Let’s keep pulling the string, because where the story ends is, it ends with the hand of government.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So who then owns these public companies? Who owns these companies? Who are the top shareholders of most public companies? Large asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, index fund managers.

Okay. So who are the clients of these index fund managers? The largest clients of these index fund managers are none other than the likes of CalPERS. You’ll know this, right? CalPERS is California’s pension fund system, New York’s pension fund system, et cetera.

So here’s what I’m surmising now is not, what I’m saying now is not surmising. It’s not conspiracy. This is hard reality. CalPERS, the state of New York’s pension funds, the pension funds that invest with the large asset managers effectively have said that you don’t get to manage our money unless you adopt certain of these pre-specified commitments.

Now, those large pools of capital, you’re talking about half a trillion dollars in the case of CalPERS, bigger than that, even. Those are not pure market actors, right? Those are arms of the government.

MARK CUBAN: Wait, wait, BlackRock, you’re saying BlackRock and CalPERS, CalPERS is a state government.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: CalPERS is actually an arm of the government, right?

MARK CUBAN: There has recently been a Supreme Court decision, and there is a whole party of people saying all decisions go back to the state, and that’s the way it should be, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Regardless of what my point is, you’ve got government-

MARK CUBAN: But I know that’s not your point. I just had to throw that in there.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And I’m a big fan of going deep on the recent Supreme Court decisions. We may have to do that another day because that’s like a whole hour discussion.

But the point is, you have government actors that are managing large swaths of money that tell these asset managers that are then bound by those constraints, so then when BlackRock votes their shares at each of those public companies, so here’s a particular example. In 2022, they voted in favor of … This is actually a great example to respond to your argument, Mark.

In 2022, Apple was asked by some sort of social activist group that held a couple of shares to adopt racial equity audits, to tell the investors, just tell the investors what they want to know. Apple’s board said, this is nonsense. Okay, it’s going to be a waste of our time and money. It’s going to create litigation risk. It’s going to restrict our ability to hire for the very best. No, we, the board of directors of Apple, don’t want to do it.

Nonetheless, BlackRock and State Street and a number of other asset managers vote for that proposal anyway, after which Apple’s board of directors says, okay, all right, well, we got to reconsider, now do the racial equity audit. To me, the idea that that is just a private business making decisions without external influence, because BlackRock’s voting that way in part because their clients like CalPERS and the state of New York demand they behave that way, yet those clients aren’t really profit-motivated alone. They’re also solving for governmental objectives, suggests that a lot of this basis for corporations doing it, you’re saying that that just reveals that it’s in their best interest. I don’t think it’s actually true because they’re being pressured by government actors.

MARK CUBAN: I know you think there’s all these ideological perpetrators, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I do.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, obviously. But there’s some other things that have to happen behind all this. One, the people at CalPERS, the person in charge has got to get the return or they lose their job, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: They don’t though. CalPERS, that’s the whole point because they do what they’re at, like a hedge fund, like the one that you started or the one that I worked at.

MARK CUBAN: Okay, well, let’s just say —

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: CalPERS, that’s the whole problem.

MARK CUBAN: Okay, I’ll give you that. You would think, I know, more ideological perpetrators.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: They can’t be fired. If somebody’s not doing a good job, I’d love to fire them. In the government, you can’t do it, which is unfortunate.

MARK CUBAN: I’m pretty sure that the head of CalPERS, there’s been turnover there, but I don’t know for certain. So let’s just put them aside. BlackRock, obviously they have to perform or Larry Fink is going to fire them or people are going to pull their money. And that’s one.

Two, I’m pretty sure, but I’m not positive, that CalPERS doesn’t own more than 5% of Apple or any company, do they?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: CalPERS does not directly. No, they invest in BlackRock and Vanguard. But together, BlackRock, BlackRock and Vanguard own about 20% of most public companies, or 15%, 15%.

MARK CUBAN: Not of most, of the total market cap.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Of the total market cap. Of the total market cap adjusted.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, but you could even add other firms like Invesco that also are played by the same-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right, right.

MARK CUBAN: But I don’t think they own more than 5% because all the rules of how they participate-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, it’ll be a single-digit percentages for each of these firms.

MARK CUBAN: No, but under there’s, once you go beyond 4.99999, all the rules change, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Sure.

MARK CUBAN: Because you’ve made, so my point is, they’re small, they’re not so big. Now they’re influential, so they have a lot of-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It’ll be like 8, 9% in certain cases, but a single digit is your point.

MARK CUBAN: I don’t know for sure, right? But let’s just say, that still goes to the heart of how do you value a company, right? There’s a couple ways to value a public company. It could just be supply and demand, which means the more demand you create for the stock, the price goes up, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah.

MARK CUBAN: And then there’s the discounted net cash flows of, the net present value of the discounted net cash flows, right? Which go into, determine the stock price if you do it on Benjamin Graham type South, right? That’s what makes decisions. That’s what it does.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I agree with that.

MARK CUBAN: Right. But it does, look, all these variables- I think you have a lot of- As much as you want to make these guys, as much as you want to make the-

Okay. So you’ve got CalPERS and you’ve got some other large states. State of Texas does it the exact opposite way. They put their finger on the scale by saying, banks can’t do this, banks can’t do that. So it goes both ways, but the realm of the world today, or the country today is, we’re letting states make those decisions.

And so if you want to take Texas, not allowing companies to invest, or not allowing banks to do-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: To divest from oil, gas, whatever.

MARK CUBAN: Right. Right. Whatever it is, it goes both ways. It’s a lot of discussion. I like this.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: No, but let me- You go ahead, and then I’ll get to the juicy stuff. Real quick.

MARK CUBAN: Okay. So then all of a sudden, it still comes down to what’s the company’s worth. What is the company worth, right? Because if BlackRock can talk until they’re blue in their face, they can make proposals until they’re blue in the face. But if the company can’t perform and reach the thresholds for performance that they need to, what BlackRock said doesn’t matter, because big enough to get in, big enough to get out, right?

So while we can point the gun at them and say, oh, this is awful what they’re doing and saying, it doesn’t matter. They’re not the bad guy. Banks are building self-interest.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: This area of common ground is actually still a belief in the market to be able to solve a lot of these problems. So actually, one of the companies I started since my time at Roivant was a company called Strive. Are you familiar with that or not?

MARK CUBAN: Okay.

Strive and the Free Market

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So actually, to your point, because this issue itched me, I wrote a book called Woke Inc. about a lot of what I saw as some of the inefficiency introduced by the committee class that’s taken over a lot of our culture.

MARK CUBAN: What is this with all these classes, right? You guys, you, Rufo, Driessen. There’s this whole ideological group that meets on Sundays, right? It’s the smoke-filled room. You conspiracy theorist, Mark. No, it’s like all these people that went to Ivy League schools and got trained by former Black Panthers that now are infiltrating the HR department and they’re all grouped together.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: The HR department, some of these HR departments, we just need to downsize them by about 80%. But anyway, my point was actually going to be overlapping with one thing you said is believing in the market for people to at least solve these problems. All the hard-core capitalists. The company I started with, Strive, which basically says we’ll offer the same kinds of index funds that BlackRock and Vanguard offer, but without proxy voting or without payroll engagement that favors ESG goals.

MARK CUBAN: Great, good for you.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Whatever maximized value. And you know what? From a retail perspective, launched less than two years ago was its first fund. The AUM has grown at a faster rate than JP Morgan in their first year when they entered the same line of business because the market exists for it.

MARK CUBAN: You get to do that and so does BlackRock.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: As long as we’re in a free country and everyone’s playing by the same set of rules and the government tipping the scales, I’m really happy with that. They are. The problem is the government tipping the scales is where it actually bothers me.

MARK CUBAN: You’re talking states, right? Different world. Maybe a year ago we would have had a different conversation. But they’re allowed to do that. They’re allowed to do that. Now, you want the states to have that power.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I do believe in the market solving problems. And so there’s an area of common ground. Here’s where the market is not allowed to solve the problem though. Because even if you’re a contractor with the government, even outside the realm of asset management now, anybody who’s a federal contractor, and that’s about 20, people think that’s a small percentage of the workforce. No, it’s a big number.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, it’s a big number.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: About 20% of the workforce works for an employer that could be classified as a federal contractor bound by these rules. You have to, not because the market says so, but because the government says so, actually have certain goals that you have to hit when it relates to the diversity or the demographic attributes of your workforce. That’s not coming from the market. That’s coming from the government.

And so all my point is, Mark, is we can’t just say just because a company is doing it, it’s the product of the free market that’s told us that’s a company we want.

MARK CUBAN: You’re exactly right. There are contractors who make choices whether or not they want to work with the government or not. My first company, we could have gone and we could have worked with the government. I chose not to, not because we weren’t diverse or anything, because all the bureaucracy that I would have had-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You don’t want the government telling you what to do?

MARK CUBAN: No, it’s not that. There’s just too much bureaucracy in too many forms, right? There’s just that. Same with the streaming industry. We could have done contracting for them. Too much bureaucracy. I don’t think the government should be tilting the scales.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And when you have 20% of the workforce employed by a company, then when you say, hey, the company is just behaving this way because the market’s telling them to, all my point is that’s not the full story because you do have the invisible hand of government, not the invisible hand of the market behind it.

MARK CUBAN: Contractors don’t have to do business with the government. They don’t have to.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But you’re less competitive versus your competitors.

MARK CUBAN: No, you’re probably more competitive. You’re probably more competitive because you don’t have to deal with, have the overhead to deal with the bureaucracy.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, but you also get lower cost of capital with a fat margin because they have less competitors bidding for those contracts. And so all I’m saying is the government-

MARK CUBAN: Okay, well, that’s your choice. That’s your choice.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Even speaking as a citizen, right? The government’s not an exogenous agency. It’s what’s actually responsive to us.

MARK CUBAN: I’m not saying government is efficient, but-

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I don’t want the government imposing that. I want them to get the lowest cost provider of IT without regard to what the rate of competition is, right?

MARK CUBAN: A lot of that goes back decades. Some of it’s more recent, but a lot of it goes back decades, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Generations, right? A lot of it goes back 60s.

MARK CUBAN: Right, right. So I read the whole book, what the hell was it called? I forget. Well, basically it said the Civil Rights Act led to us losing all these rights. But what they did answer was, what’s a better way? What is a better way? Because I’m a big believer that we’re only as strong as our weakest link as a country. That kids, the kids that we have, if they’re not fed, if they’re not clothed, if they don’t have shelter, if they don’t have daycare, if they don’t have access to decent schools, then the whole country will fail. Not the whole country will fail, but we’re going to always struggle to raise up our GDP, to raise up the quality of life in this country. Because the outliers make things more difficult.

And when you’re in a country now of 330 million people, just 1%, 2%, 3%, 5% is a whole lot of people you have to deal with. So going back to what you said in terms of programs that try to put their thumb on the scale, when you’re trying to solve a problem like that, how do you lift up people who have been discriminated against for generations? Not just Black Americans with a legacy of slavery, but immigrants and others who have come over here who have been shit on, legally and illegally. How do you try to change that, to lift them up?

Because in my mind, and I don’t have a model to prove this, but in my mind, it’s going to be a lot more difficult for all citizens. It’s going to be a lot more expensive for all citizens. And it’s going to create a lot worse issues for all of us if you don’t lift up the bottoms. So back in the 60s, they did what they thought was right. They were wrong in a lot of respects, but that was the shot they took. And we’ve gotten to where we are today, right?

Now, we can bitch about it all we want, but either we come up with solutions to solve it. Just saying it’s wrong to have the government on there for a problem they’ve tried to solve 60 years ago doesn’t solve anything.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And this is a longer discussion, right? But many of those problems, what happens is when you create the bureaucracy to solve the problem, once the problem has been solved or mostly solved, the right answer is to move on and celebrate it.

MARK CUBAN: So do you think discrimination has been mostly solved?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, I think it has. So this is a deeper question, okay? And it’s important.

I think it has gotten below the level that it was useful to try to use government tools to solve. So there was a time and place, right? So I’ll give you an analogy, because we’re both in healthcare, right? You’re in healthcare now, and I used to be. When the body’s fighting off a virus, okay, at a certain point, the body needs to mount an immune response to the virus. But when that immune response continues long after the virus is mostly cleared, you actually harm the organ itself.

That’s effectively what I see happening in the nation in our fight against discrimination. Does some level of invidious racial discrimination still exist in this country in multiple different directions? It does. But our systematic response, pretending like it’s still 1960 or 1860, that actually creates more of that same division.

MARK CUBAN: Okay, so you’re making my point. You’re making my point.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: At a certain point, we’ve got to let it automatically, let the market solve it, to borrow your point, right? Don’t tell a business what they can or can’t do or what they must do. Smart entrepreneurs. Actually, this is just to bring your own point. If we got rid of the categories in the Civil Rights Act, right, of race, gender, sexual orientation now included, religion, national origin, and you just said, we don’t need that because believing in what you do and also what I do is in the power of capitalism, that’s an opportunity for a different business owner to say, hey, I get to hire all these great people.

Why do we need the government still creating an EEOC to be able to monitor those decisions to make sure that enough minorities are hired in an era where businesses themselves, out of their own self-interest, could get to the same place?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Now, aren’t you talking out of both sides of your mouth, right? I mean, if I may.

MARK CUBAN: And I’ll tell you exactly why. No, that’s fine. And I don’t mind to give and take. Right.

The Need for Policies Against Discrimination

MARK CUBAN: So first of all, you’re saying the Civil Rights Act worked.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m saying that — I’m not saying it got to the point where –

MARK CUBAN: You just said we got to the point where maybe we got too far.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Whether that was the right answer, the culture was changing any way we could debate. But do we actually need it now? I think there was a strong case back then. I would admit that.

MARK CUBAN: OK, that’s fine. That’s fine. So now let’s go to the medicine example. Right. The thing about medicine, it’s the only place where you can be an expert, where you’re right 5% of the time. Right. Then you’re a great doctor. And so when you’re trying to figure out what that point is where the body has too strong an immune response, you don’t know until sometimes it’s too late, until after you’re sick, whatever it may be. And on the flip side, you may not know until it’s too late if the body hasn’t generated enough of an immune response. And there’s issues there.

And the same thing applies here. It’s hard to thread the needle to know exactly where to stop or even if you should stop. And so to just shit on the whole thing, that’s the problem I have. Right. You can say, look, let’s try to solve a problem. How do we get to the point where discrimination doesn’t exist? Fine. That’s a worthy goal. But the answer is not just saying it doesn’t exist and we don’t need anything.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But you didn’t hear that from me. I said there is some level of racial discrimination that probably exists.

MARK CUBAN: No, but you said.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But at a certain point, we could effectively leave it to the market to solve.

MARK CUBAN: Right. Well, at a certain point, where is that certain point? I don’t believe we’re at this. I think you do. I don’t. Right. That’s what makes the market. Right.

But the challenge is. But when you’re selling things, let’s just extract government out. If you have a better solution. Yeah, that’s one thing. Just open it up to the market because there are in the workforce. Seventy seven percent of the workforce is white. Ninety plus percent of investment is with white people towards white people. Right. And so if you just leave it to the market, I’m not saying there’s no chance it works, but I’m saying there’s a good chance it won’t work.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah. And here’s what I think. I think we’re actually seeing, and this may be another area of common ground in a certain sense, but for different reasons. I think we’re actually seeing, weirdly, an uptick in anti-black, anti-minority and also anti-white racism in a lot of different directions that I would have never imagined even 20 years ago.

Right. Back when I was even rewinding to 2007, when I was reading about your old company sale and I was graduating from college, if you told me in the year 2024, we would be seeing an uptick in the level of racial animus in the country that we have now. I would have said that was crazy. Back then, but I think part of the reason we’re seeing it is heightened race consciousness and the feeling that you have a system that’s taking something away from you on the basis of your skin color. There’s no better way to throw kerosene on the final burning embers of racism.

MARK CUBAN: Where do you think that kerosene is coming from?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I think it’s largely coming from a lot of these, maybe even well-intended government policies. The idea that you can’t be a government contractor unless you’re paying by these rules.

MARK CUBAN: What has changed dramatically over the past five, six years?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Over the past five, six years? Economically, when I think about a lot of disparities.

MARK CUBAN: The scale of social media. That’s where it’s easy because, again, when you have tens of millions of people now able to come on and particularly lately, over the last two years, say exactly what they want to say without restriction, for the most part, it’s really easy for all the people who are disaffected to come together. And when they come together, it’s easy. No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying it’s a reality.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: A lot of things I think of social media are wrong with that.

MARK CUBAN: It’s just a reality.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It’s really a good thing, right? It brings us together.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah, I just see it as a reality. I’m not trying to shut anybody up. And certainly, you’ll never see me try to cancel somebody. I think that’s the worst from either side, right? I’ve never and would never try to cancel anybody. But, but, right? The reality is that we can’t presume, given all the hate that is evident to us on social media, you can’t presume that there isn’t a need for beyond just the marketplace. That is my point, right?

It is so evident, this increase in hate. Now, I understand the perspective. I read Rufo’s book, right? About decentralized support and all that. And I understand the perspective that, okay, if we took the federal government out of it, and we took DEI and the woke ideology out of it, and we moved a lot of the problem solving, if you will, the power to, and the decentralized basis to local school boards, etc., it’s all going to change, which I think is horseshit, right? Because there’s just too much hate.

And the only, in my mind, even though it’s not perfect, we have to try, we have to just accept the fact that we are not in a colorblind society. And being colorblind isn’t necessarily a good thing. We have to respect.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I respectfully disagree on that. But I hear your point.

MARK CUBAN: Right? Because people, you know, I made a mistake in one of my companies on the maps, actually. And I used to think that treating people equally meant treating them the same. That if there was a woman, a man, black, white, orange, yellow, all the rules, everything had to be exactly the same.

And then I had some people getting harassed, because I wasn’t paying attention to how everybody was being treated. Because saying something to a man versus saying something to a woman can have two different meanings. And I didn’t know this stuff was going on, right? I just treat everybody the same. Treat them fairly. That’s just not the way life is.

You don’t want to be, you know, you want your vegetarian and family background to be respected. Right? But if there’s a lot of people here in this country that have red meat and beer, right? If you don’t eat red meat, there’s something wrong with you.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: To me, Mark, that country is not the America I know. I mean, look, my view is you want to eat red meat, go.

The Need for Open-Mindedness

MARK CUBAN: I mean, you’re in a free country. I know that’s your view. You’re open-minded, but the reality is a lot of people aren’t.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So here’s my point, Mark. I think we’re actually weirdly getting a little bit more of an uptick of that precisely because of the obsession.

MARK CUBAN: No, I understand what you’re saying, right? But there’s no obsession. So this is what I think you did. What do you see in the UK? I think you did a lot of this. Yeah, I’m seeing all the shit that’s going on.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I mean, a lot of this reactionary response where you tell people to shut up, sit down, apologize for who you are. You actually create more hatred in response that otherwise would not have existed. And that’s what I’m worried is happening in this country right now.

MARK CUBAN: So I see what’s going on in the UK, and we’ll see what happens there. And a lot of that is social media driven. A lot of that is from the politicians who are pushing those lines, saying, hey, they’re taking it from you. And it’s really geared towards immigration more than anything else. It’s not so much white or black, green or yellow. It’s immigration, who belongs and who doesn’t belong, my understanding.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, no, I think it’s a different issue. It’s not about race. It’s about immigration. But yes, when you have…

MARK CUBAN: But here, what I see happening…

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: … hatred, we tell people they can’t talk about or publicly complain about that. It spills over in ways that actually are really harmful.

MARK CUBAN: One of the reasons I go on Twitter, and I love to fight back with people, right? Not troll, but actually try to have…

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I know that. You were like, you were coming at me hard during my presidential campaign. You rose to me a couple of times.

MARK CUBAN: Right, right, right. Well, right, because what I see happening is there’s a lot of people who create this woke machine. Say there’s this woke machine that’s taking over everything and ruining everything. But there’s no…

When they say who, like in Rufo’s book, it’s like going back to the Black Panthers. And then they taught in the college. And then this professor came over from France, and he taught. And then all these people went to Ivy League schools. I’ve never… And Roivant, did you ever feel woke pressure? So… In your car break, did you ever feel woke pressure?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: For the first six years of running the company, no. In the wake of what happened after BLM and BLM’s rise, after George Floyd’s death, actually, there was a moment. I think a lot of CEOs felt a lot of pressure across the country, and so did I, to sign on to… Every CEO, you remember that, wrote a public declaration.

I didn’t want to make that declaration. And the truth is, I did. Like every biotech CEO, feel some pressure to do it. That was a unique moment, but I…

MARK CUBAN: Right, but that’s one moment in time when we’re trying to… Because we didn’t have any leadership in the White House who could potentially diffuse those types of riots and those types of protests, right? More people died during those protests.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It was a hyper-charged environment when there were lockdowns across the country.

MARK CUBAN: Right, of course, it was difficult. And that’s where leadership needs to shine. And there was no leadership.

Shifting to Politics

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’ll give you a few minutes. Do you want to change the channel? We didn’t actually even get to politics, but we got to do at least a little bit. All right?

MARK CUBAN: Sure. At least a little bit.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And this is too much fun. I’m in no rush, yeah. Just give me one second to make sure I’m good here, too, because this is actually fun. Let’s see here. Oh, man. Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ve got 10 minutes, but we have to continue this. We have to continue this, all right? I’m having fun with this.

This is the thing I miss, actually, in the country. You don’t get people talking across the silos anymore. Not in an earnest way, in a way that’s public, in a way that actually tells people it’s okay to be friends with somebody who you deeply disagree with. I think we need more of that.

MARK CUBAN: But I’ve convinced you to change your position, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: No, you have not. But you’ve convinced me that we actually share more premises in common than I thought.

MARK CUBAN: I’m a capitalist.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Exactly. We can start there. We have that in common no matter what.

MARK CUBAN: I’m just a little bit more compassionate than some others. But anyway, let’s get to politics.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, let’s get to politics. The only thing is, assume the best when you can of somebody who you disagree with, too, because it may be a compassion for a different thing. I assume the best is all I’d ask, even to some of the folks you’re talking about. Politics, too. All right.

So here’s what I find funny, okay? For years, and you consider yourself a voting Democrat in recent years, or you’re a Democrat?

MARK CUBAN: No, no, I’m independent. I’m independent. And honestly, if there was a non-MAGA, when Biden was the candidate, if there was a non-MAGA Republican candidate, I probably would have voted for that person.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So, and it just, maybe to you, depends on, I would like to convince you on this another day, depends on how you define MAGA, right? Make America great. I don’t think you object to that. In fact, I think you believe some of the things we’ve talked about here.

MARK CUBAN: That’s a presumption that it wasn’t great before. I’m an American exceptionalist.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m an American exceptionalist, too. I think we need to make America greater than it has ever been. That actually should be the goal.

MARK CUBAN: Well, that’s not what they said, right? Make America greater than it has ever been before.

The 2024 Presidential Election

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So here’s the funny thing. Here’s the funny thing on the politics of this, because I know you’re on the other side of this. You’re supporting Kamala Harris for president, right?

MARK CUBAN: Correct.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Okay. I’m supporting Donald Trump for president. But here’s the interesting, before we get into the side tizzy that that will send political discussion into, for years, right? For years, the concern of many earnest Democrats in this country was that the Republican party was oppressive on issues like abortion, was thoughtless on issues like gun control, believed in leaving the working class behind, was intervening in foreign wars in places like Iraq that expended our taxpayer money and left the country worse off. That was the real concern that people had, is the Republican party was-

MARK CUBAN: For Democrats, yeah.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, yeah. They were ideologues, right? The Republican Party were ideologues on guns, abortion, foreign wars, and leaving the working class behind.

MARK CUBAN: And again, I’m not a Democrat. I’m an independent.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: No, no, no. Now I know that. Now you mentioned that, right? But we can have the discussion either way. So it’s not necessarily addressed at you, but we’re talking about this.

MARK CUBAN: That’s fine. No, I understand.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So now you get a candidate, and here’s the thing that most people don’t realize, who’s actually not an ideologue, certainly on historical Republican terms at all. Not an ideologue at all, in any sense, actually. Who on abortion is against a federal ban on abortion, is a little bit more pragmatic, you could say, in certain other issues. On gun control is softer than some Second Amendment advocates, even myself in many cases, would advocate for. You have a foreign policy that is against fighting pointless foreign wars or intervention. A Republican is publicly against that old Iraq war.

And yet now the criticism of that candidate is that, oh, he’s not principled enough, right? So from the Democrats.

MARK CUBAN: Well, yeah, but let’s talk about that. No, no, no. You’re mixing the principle that people are talking about. It’s ethics. The man told Mike Pence not to certify the election. The man called the Secretary of State, or was it governor? I forget. And asked for 11,072 votes. The man has stolen from more hardworking Americans.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You were against Trump in 2016, though. You were against Trump in 2016.

MARK CUBAN: Right. But he was unethical then, and he’s still unethical.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And in 20, right.

MARK CUBAN: That’s right. But that’s the whole point. I actually started off supporting Donald, and then I got to know him better.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: When did you support him?

MARK CUBAN: Like 2015. I was like, he’s great. He’s not a typical Stepford candidate. I thought that was a positive.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I would think you thought that’s a positive, right? A business guy who’s pretty practical, not ideological.

MARK CUBAN: I did, but then I got to know him. A big part of that is I didn’t think he had a chance. And so I just wanted to kind of screw things up in traditional politics. And I’m not a fan of.

But the bigger point is Trump University, Trump SoHo, stole $4 million from a friend of mine that had sued to get it back. Mike Pence, 40 out of 44 people.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Just take a look at the four years, because each of these are just going to be separate sort of personal attack rabbit holes. Look at the country.

MARK CUBAN: No, they’re not personal attack rabbit holes. They’re legitimate things that actually happened.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So do you think the country, do you think the economy prospered and border crossing issues were far better under Donald Trump under those four years than they’ve been in the last four years?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You know, you disagree on that premise too.

MARK CUBAN: No, because if you look at border crossings, what was Obama’s nickname? The deporter in chief. If you look at actual crossings, they were lower under Obama. And when Obama came in, they were higher. And he continued to lower them until the last couple of months.

On the economy, Obama took a fucked up economy and improved it. And Trump inherited that. Right. And actually inflation grew by 25% under Trump over Obama. And what was the third one?

MARK CUBAN: You get it. Border and economy is where I started talking about.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Right. And so we hit the all time low on border crossings in about 2019, 2020.

MARK CUBAN: Okay. Are you sure about that? Are you sure?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It’s actually the chart that Trump was turning to when he got shot, right?

MARK CUBAN: Right. But that doesn’t make it right. That they went up in the first two years, but then it actually, they only implemented the Trump controls about a year, about a year and a half to two years. Let’s just put that off to the side and we’ll check that to make sure that border crossings weren’t lower under him.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: The lowest point was lower than it’s ever been. The lowest point was lowest than it’s ever been.

MARK CUBAN: Yeah. Okay. We’ll check. But Obama deported a multiple of the number of illegals that Trump deported. Which you’re in favor of, by the way.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Are you in favor of deportation?

MARK CUBAN: I don’t. Yeah. I don’t have a problem if they’re here illegally. Just do it compassionately. Don’t just stick them in a cage. But I have no problem with removing people who are here, particularly recent. Who knows the number? 10 million, 11 million, whatever it is. But you can’t just all of a sudden, how you approach it is critical. And Trump has not said a word about it yet. And he’s been talking about it forever. But again, that’s not the core issue. You want to talk about- You want to talk about-

Ethical Leadership

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: That is a core issue. That border crime economy. I get that. But you know what? The one certainty about the office of the President of the United States is the complete uncertainty.

MARK CUBAN: That you have no idea what comes next. Would you agree with that?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yes.

MARK CUBAN: Okay. And so in my mind, and I think a lot of people’s minds that oppose Donald Trump, is that you want somebody there that is educated on the world, but more importantly, just is ethical, right? So that they make ethical decisions.

You want somebody when there is no precedent. It’s never happened before. You want somebody that has hired, not people who are most loyal, like Tony Soprano might have done, but hired the very best people. And those people want to stay and work for them. Not that they’re loyal. You want somebody whose first inclination is not to do what’s in their own best personal interest. You can’t deny that’s Donald Trump.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m reluctant to get into, because I’m not a particularly partisan hack type Republican versus Democrat person.

MARK CUBAN: This has nothing to do with partisans.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m also very critical of the Republican party. So I’m reluctant to say what I’m about to say. But you think about this, right? Look at someone like Biden over the four years. I know it’s Kamala Harris is the nominee now. But what is your attitude towards the fact that you talk about self-interest? Nothing bothers me more than politicians looking up to their self-interest when they’re in office. What is your perspective on, while Joe Biden is the vice president of the United States, his son serving without a qualification or an iota of a qualification on the board of a Ukrainian state-affiliated energy company?

MARK CUBAN: That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous, right? It was a mistake. Yeah, but his son was an adult in his 40s, right? As a parent, I can’t control my teenagers. You’re not going to control an adult.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But there’s good evidence that he’s not looking the other way.

MARK CUBAN: And he’s going to jail. And that kid is going to jail. And on top of that, you had Comer and others who tried to impeach Biden and did a complete investigation of it and who came to the conclusion that there was no there there in terms of the big guy, right? But let’s just say it was completely investigated. And we haven’t even gotten into the Mueller report, right? And what they came out with.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, but the Mueller report, that’s actually great to talk about, because that impeded the first two years of his presidency on the basis of allegations that he’s not going to get the heart of this. I am concerned about policies. I’m deeply concerned.

MARK CUBAN: I have to admit. No, I’m not unconcerned. I’m not unconcerned about policies, right? But it’s just like a CEO of a company. Would you hire somebody that has a long history of stealing from people? Being unethical, you would not.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: And, you know, is Donald Trump a perfect person? No, he is not. Am I a perfect person? I’m not. Are you a perfect person? You’re not. No, but we’re not talking about who’s the actual best friend. Have you ever stolen money?

MARK CUBAN: I’ve never stolen money from anyone, no.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Either have I, right?

MARK CUBAN: Have you ever had a company?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I have no evidence to say that Donald Trump has either.

MARK CUBAN: Oh, I do, for sure. Ask Barbara Corcoran, right? You know, she had to sue to get her money back. Ask anybody from Trump University. Ask people who bought condos in Trump’s Soho. Ask people from, you know, Trump Foundation that gave money there. Ask people who are giving money today. And he’s using that money for his legal fees. This isn’t like a little discretion. This is a habit. That’s why I can’t support him.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, so look, I think that’s less about politics and more about maybe like a criticism of one man.

MARK CUBAN: No, but that’s the whole point. You were talking about ethics. You would not. Have you ever told any of your employees to short pay a vendor? Just to try to save some money? Either have I. Right. What do you think about somebody who does that? You know, it was crazy to me during the trial.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I think a lot of what’s happened is, because you saw this in the New York trial. I don’t know what your perspective is on the New York trial, how closely you followed that.

MARK CUBAN: I did.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I think that trial is fundamentally unjust against Donald Trump. OK. Did you agree with that? I should say it is. Do you agree with that?

MARK CUBAN: I don’t know.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Not necessarily. If you say a prosecutor comes for you, right? Because you’re a business guy. You can empathize with this. If you run a company.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’ve had the SEC come after me, so I get it.

Let’s say you have a lawyer’s bill that comes in and you classify it as a legal expense. But part of this was you were paying off hash money to Stormy Daniels. And the government’s theory of the case is, no, you should have classified that as a campaign expenditure. Think about this. You had to classify that as a campaign expenditure had he said that’s a campaign expense. So he uses a campaign account to be able to pay hash money to Stormy Daniels.

They should be and would be coming after him for that, right? Because you shouldn’t use political campaign money. The government’s whole theory is he should have been using campaign money. He used personal money for it. So my point is, in a lot of these cases, they were going to get him either way.

MARK CUBAN: OK, so first of all, Hillary Clinton. I just worry a lot of things create a distortion.

Wrapping Up

My guy here is giving us like signs. We got to go. I’m going to this magazine interview. This is fun. If you’re down for doing this again and continuing, I would love it. Hey, do you know, this is random. Do you know Reid Hoffman or not?

MARK CUBAN: Barely a couple of emails.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I actually was interested in getting because he also seems like a guy who more than you, more than you. I mean, I would really disagree with him, but he also seems like a smart guy.

He’s come up. So if you don’t, if you don’t, if you happen to know, because I’ve never had any connection with him, I disagree with him on a lot of things. But some of his advice for Kamala Harris, I thought was pretty interesting. I mean, if his advice to her, as I was reading publicly, because I was fascinated by this is fire Lena Kahn and distance yourself from what he calls the Trump-Biden tariffs. I just thought that was, it caught my attention.

MARK CUBAN: Let me ask you a question.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Just a hypothetical real quick. You’re closing. I want to talk to you. You and him want to have a discussion. I’ll connect him.

MARK CUBAN: But just have him pop on the equivalent of this. No, you just, you two could talk. You guys, he’s smart. You guys talk.

Yeah. But let me ask you a question. If, you know, you’ve seen what’s happened with the border crossings recently, right? They’ve dropped dramatically. She said she was signed a bill that the Republicans put together. Right. Inflation is declining rapidly. She won’t have tariffs. Right. So effectively.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: We don’t have any tariffs. Actually, I want to see what.

MARK CUBAN: No, I’m pretty sure she won’t have tariffs. Right. Depends on which kind of tariffs. Anyways. Anyway. So what I’m about to say is, if she checked all your policy boxes, would you vote for her over Trump?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, she doesn’t check. I mean, she’s dead.

MARK CUBAN: I’m just saying because she hasn’t come up. It’s only been two weeks. But what’s the hypothetical?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It’s a hypothetical. I’m going to vote for the candidate who I believe has the best policies for the United States of America and who has some basis to carry them out. In my mind, that’s exactly why I’m voting for Trump.

That’s exactly why I’m voting for Trump. And Trump and I don’t agree on 100% of policies. I mean, I ran for president last year, for God’s sake. Right. And there are some areas where he and I have had open discussions. We have slightly different views. And that’s great.

MARK CUBAN: But again, let’s just say that list of policies you have in mind.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I will vote for the candidate who I believe is committed to enacting the policies I agree with for the United States. Is committed to enacting, is what I will say. But the candidate I believe is most committed to enacting the policies that I care about. And you know what’s number one on the list for me? Is dismantling bureaucracy. Dismantling bureaucracy is.

MARK CUBAN: So if the other.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: If Kamala Harris comes out and says that she’s going to fire 75% of federal bureaucrats and shut down.

MARK CUBAN: Nobody can do that. But you can’t do that.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: She’d have my attention. She’d have my attention.

MARK CUBAN: You can’t do that. You and I can disagree on that. But what you can do is use technology to make the government a lot more efficient.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Sure, add that in there too. To replace a lot of the excess bureaucrats.

MARK CUBAN: So the government declines in size while improving the amount of impact it has for the people who need it most. They’re not mutually exclusive. Right. But you can’t. There’s no legal basis to fire 75% of any department. And you can’t control all that.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Mass firings are absolutely in. Just like a CEO can do.

MARK CUBAN: Well, even if you do. Time to go? Oh man, we’re having too much fun. Anyway, we’ll finish another time.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: All right, man. We’ll talk soon.

MARK CUBAN: We’ll appreciate it. Thank you, bro. Thanks for that. It was a lot of fun. Take care, buddy.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. It was. Thank you.

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