Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Public Policy, Brazil, 2021-2022
Research Associate, Afro Latin American Research Institute, Harvard University, 2020-2021
Director: Institute for the STudy of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2018-2020
Erasmus Mundus Visiting Professor, Barcelona Institute for International Studies, 2013
Fellow: Free University of Berlin, 2011
About The Book
This book proposes a radical new way of thinking about our democratic future, our ecological survival, and our ways to keep economies fair. It shows that adopting upper limits to wealth and income; replacing elections with local direct democracy and legal duty involving randomly selected citizens; and replacing welfare and redistribution policies with pre-distribution and reparations promises new solutions to political apathy, discontent, manipulation, economic inequality, unfairness, unequal opportunities, and looming ecological disaster.
Most public debates today focus on the poor, on minorities, and on immigrants when discussing the problems of our democracies. The poor, minorities and immigrants, however, are not our problem. They had no say in designing the kinds of systems that threaten our planet, our wellbeing, and our social and communal lives. They consume very little and thus have a minimal ecological footprint. It is the super-rich who threaten justice, fairness, equal opportunity, and ecological sustainability.
How Does this Book Address the
2020 Political Crisis?
With the recent political election that lasted days with tallying each vote, Legal Duty Upper Limits elaborates how the current electoral college is no longer a constructive force in American politics and also discusses how to protect fairness and equal opportunity in the United States in order to protect our environment for a sustained future.
“This is a very timely book, as the awareness of the crises of representative democracy and capitalism are growing worldwide, along with the awareness to effectively address the ecological crisis. However, no pervasive solutions have been proposed so far – which is what this book seeks to do,” states Reiter.
