The problem is, billionaires are generally pretty bad people, and certainly can’t be trusted to reliably champion the interests of the working class. Steyer, despite his public embrace of environmentalist and progressive causes, was heavily invested in private prisons and even fossil fuel companies. In 2014, the New York Times reported that “Mr Steyer’s fund, Farallon Capital Management, has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that operate coalmines and coal-fired power plants from Indonesia to China.” For years, his company also “invested heavily in the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison firm”. Steyer’s investments were so controversial that at one point, Yale students protested the way Steyer was using their university’s endowment.
