Noam Chomsky is mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show as a rhetorical reference point in the debate over privatization, not as a guest or interviewee. In the episode “Fire All Government Workers,” host Bob Zadek invokes Chomsky to represent the position that privatization transfers public institutions to private control, and quotes a definition of privatization attributed to him. The excerpts contain no interview with Chomsky, no discussion of his academic work, and no statement from him in his own voice.
The quoted definition
In the episode, Bob Zadek introduces Chomsky as “not exactly a right-winger” and offers a quotation: “Privatization does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny.” Zadek then characterizes private business, in Chomsky’s words, as “an unaccountable tyranny,” and asks whether that description might also apply to the DMV. The quotation is presented by Zadek as a summary of the anti-privatization position, and he uses it to set up the discussion with guest Adrian Moore of the Reason Foundation. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
Earlier in the same episode, Zadek asks whether anyone who is sane, “other than Noam Chomsky,” would choose to create a monopoly, require unionization, and grant civil service protection rather than allow private businesses driven by profit to bid on government work. Moore responds that there is somebody, but that he is not sane. The exchange frames Chomsky as the emblematic opponent of market-based service delivery. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
The privatization argument
The bulk of the episode is devoted to Moore’s case for privatization, with Chomsky’s quoted definition serving as the position to be refuted. Moore describes Sandy Springs, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta with about 80,000 residents, which incorporated after years of dissatisfaction with services from Fulton County. State law required the new city to provide police and fire; it contracted with a private engineering company, CH2M Hill, to manage everything else, including water, wastewater, trash, and streets. Moore states that when the three-year contracts came up for re-bid, the city chose several companies for different services to increase competition. He adds that four other cities in Georgia and a couple in Colorado have since incorporated using the same model. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
Zadek states that Sandy Springs spends about $25 million a year to outsource almost all city functions except police and fire, for a city of 78,000, which he describes as half of what would otherwise be spent with no compromise in quality. Moore argues that the choice and competition present in private markets produce better results than government monopolies, and cites Phoenix and Charlotte as cities that divided trash collection into four sections with four separate contracts to create competitive pressure. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
Union opposition and the quality debate
The episode also addresses union opposition to privatization. Zadek plays a commercial from Rhode Island opposing the privatization of a municipal hospital, in which the announcer warns that the jobs of public employees are in jeopardy and urges listeners to tell legislators to prevent a “faceless out-of-state for-profit company” from creating another Walter Reed scandal. Zadek responds with incredulity at the characterization, and Moore says the commercial reflects a level of discourse he has encountered at countless public hearings, describing it as a special interest play in which quality of services is secondary to protecting jobs. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
Moore argues that the private sector is trusted to build cars, manufacture pharmaceuticals, produce food, and in about a third of the United States produce drinking water, and asks why it cannot be trusted to care for veterans. He notes that a private nonprofit hospital run by Catholic Healthcare West operates across town from the municipal hospital in question. Zadek adds that he lives in Marin County, where the local hospital is owned by a for-profit group, and says he would not refuse treatment there on the grounds that it is for-profit. Fire All Government Workers (2011)
Across episodes
Only one episode in the excerpts, “Fire All Government Workers,” touches on Noam Chomsky, and the excerpts show no development in his treatment across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not include any interview with Chomsky, any statement from him in his own voice, or any discussion of his linguistic or political writings beyond the single quoted definition of privatization. They do not state his institutional affiliation, his field, or the date or context of the quotation. The episode does not present a response from Chomsky or from anyone defending his position beyond Zadek’s and Moore’s characterizations.