Ulrike Herrmann
$37.99
Scribe Publications

Will the Public Sector workers of tomorrow be monitoring people’s consumption?

German author Ulrike Herrmann presents this as one scenario as she addresses what she believes to be the incompatible nature of market-based economies reliant on growth and the survival of humanity.

Ms Herrmann opens her book with a relatively benign view of the capitalist system which all but ended famine in Europe and freed people from feudalism and subsistence living.

However, the author, a member of the German Greens, outlines why she thinks capitalism’s place at the heart of not just people’s financial and working lives, but their entire existence, needs to be re-appraised.

Ms Herrmann said technological advancements to abate the worst excesses of capitalism, such as climate change, will not be enough to prevent complete environmental destruction. Instead, she said, governments need to adopt “the ‘S’-word, which no politician wants to say out loud: sacrifice”.

Readers accustomed to creature comforts may find her ideas confronting, but this is an excellent book on our future.