Chomsky on Billionaires, Wealth Inequality and How Aristotle and Madison Dealt With Them

[Jefferson23]

I interviewed Noam Chomsky on Tuesday, on my Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, covering a number of topics that I'll be breaking into separate articles. This one was on wealth inequality and the no-billionaires idea, or what I like to call de-billionairization.

Listen to the audio podcast here.

R.K.= Rob Kall
N.C. = Noam Chomsky

R.K.: Now, you have written about how the founders really established a country to secure their rights of property against the danger from inequality and universality of suffrage and you talk about how Aristotle thought that democracy was the best form of government but for a flaw was the great mass of the poor could use their voting power to take the property of the rich, which would be unfair.

Now, recently a number of people, including myself ,have been talking about a no-billionaires America-- de-billionairizing the country, the world, because billionaires', extreme wealth is dangerous. That is the opposite of what Aristotle was saying where he was saying it's not fair. Do you have thoughts on extreme wealth and how it affects people?

N.C.: Well we have to be fair to Aristotle first. Actually, Aristotle and James Madison, the main framer of the US Constitution, they faced the same problem, they both recognized that in a democracy, the majority of poor ,could use their power to take away the property of the rich, going back to those days to carry out policies that we now call agrarian reform, you know distributing land and so on, and they both recognized that that was unfair but they picked opposite solutions.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Chomsky-on-Billionaires-W-by-Rob-Kall-Aristotle_Billionaires_Democracy_James-Madison-140213-128.html

[aquart]

1. I have so little respect for Aristotle.

Tutored Alex the Great. So when Alex's king dad was murdered and Aristotle was asked if he thought Alex was involved (he so was), Aristotle's non-answer was basically, "everybody does it."