Wrecking Ball

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wrecking Ball </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>explores in an unprecedented manner a decalogue of wicked problems that confronts humanity: Nuclear proliferation climate change pandemics permanent technological unemployment Orwellian public and private surveillance social media that distorts reality cyberwarfare the fragmentation of democracies the inability of nations to cabin private power the failure of multinational institutions to promote collaboration and the deepening of autocratic rule in countries that have never known anything but extractive institutions. Collectively or even severally these wicked problems constitute crises that could end civilisation.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(147 0 0 1)>Does this list frighten you or do you blithely assume that tomorrow will be just like yesterday?</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wrecking Ball </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>shows that without an inclusive system of global governance the collective action required to solve those wicked problems falls beyond the remit of the world's 20 inclusive democracies 50 flawed democracies and 130 extractive elitist autocracies. Flawed democracies and autocracies that already struggle to produce goods necessary for their own citizens to flourish are simply incapable of committing to international arrangements that address the existential threats posed by the decalogue of wicked problems.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(147 0 0 1)>This then is our children's inheritance: Dystopias far far worse than the polities that we ourselves have known. What if anything can mitigate the harms that are our legacy?</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wrecking Ball </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>offers as an answer a ground-breaking analysis of South Africa's political economy. It demonstrates that this country's elitist and extractive political and economic institutions not only make resolution of ongoing domestic crises unattainable likewise they make meaningful responses to wicked problems impossible.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(147 0 0 1)>Smart people think they have all the answers. Without laboring under any such illusions Martin Luther King Jr eloquently opined: 'The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.' But what will happen King would acidly ask if we continue to dawdle and simply run out of time?</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wrecking Ball </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>similalry operates under no such 'smart' pretenses and undeterred and unmatched ventures into terrrains traversed by truly great political economists: Smith Ricardo Marx and Keynes. By knitting together what we all know to be the facts with cutting edge theory in economics sociology history and political science the book paints an unflinching portrait of where we are and where we are headed.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(147 0 0 1)>Are we ready to be honest with ourselves about the likely future of this overheated overpopulated planet?</span></p>