Dr. Yunus's simple but revolutionary idea was that the poor could be as creditworthy as the rich, if the rules of lending were tailored to their circumstances and were founded on principles of trust rather than financial capacity.
But you can see the problem here: even if some "providers" turn out to be saintly, others will use the profit motive as nature intended, and get as rich as the rules will allow.
More than 2,000 years ago aphorist Publilius Syrus expressed precisely the same idea: "Debt is the slavery of the free", as did the Bible: "The rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender".
It's hard to see how emphasising the procedural unfairness of the "ultra-rich" rigging the rules to their benefit would help make the American middle class more amenable to paying more in taxes.
The most important thing in any of the rich economies, the one single thing which does the most to underpin the fact that we are rich, is the rule of law.
Poorer countries have a harder time demanding sacrifices from their people when rich countries flout the rules.
Open burning of waste, another common disposal method, releases lots of dioxins, just as it did in incinerators in the rich world before the rules were tightened.In 2007 the Blacksmith Institute, an American NGO, listed Dandora in Kenya, the site of Nairobi's main dump, among the world's 30 most polluted spots.
They are no different to somali pirates who get rich 'playing outside' the rules of commerce.
Extreme income inequalities may also be incompatible with a well-functioning democracy; the rich may write the rules in their favor, and they may work against the public provision of health care or education, for which they pay a large share but have little personal need.
The reason most of us have seen little gain from economic growth over the last three decades is that the rich have rigged the rules to ensure that money flows upward.
