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Hello and welcome to Better Offline.

We are live in beautiful New York City.

I am your host, Ed Zittron, of course.

Better Offline. and I'm joined today by Zephyr Tchow. She's a professor of law at Fordham Law School and the author of Breakem Up, recovering our freedom from big ag, big tech and big money. Zephyah, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me on, Ed.

So, let's talk corruption. So you've talked a great deal about corruption, but what does it

mean in the business and economic sense? Yeah. I mean, corruption is, it's this idea that comes

from the Latin, you know, the rupt. Right.

Rupure break apart.

And a co-ruption is breaking apart from within.

So it's internal disintegration. That's this, I mention that because, and the deep roots of the language, because questions

of corruption have been central to economic and political thinking for

thousands of years. Right. So one way to start thinking about corruption, if you don't mind,

is to think about Aristotle. Okay. Okay. Right. Because I actually am quite drawn to Aristotle's understanding of corruption,

and I think it's a kind of man on the street understanding of corruption as well.

What is it? Yeah, it's the idea that those with governing power use that governing power

to serve themselves instead of the public.

So in Aristotle's classic formulation, he talked about the difference between a monarch and a tyrant, you know, is both are rule by a single entity.

The difference is the monarch serves the public and the tyrant serves himself.

Aristotle's other two formulations were then the rule by an elite few.

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