The system is busted. That much is clear. Now many people are experimenting with alternatives. Roberto Mangabeira Unger has long been one of those on the cutting edge of fundamental reform. Finally he has the chance to change the course of history.

A new class of kings has taken over Wall Street and they’re ravishing everything that lies before them.†

Money for nothing. Own a home for no money down. Do not pay for your appliances until 2012. This is the new American Dream, and for the last few years, millions have been giddily living it. But much of the ever-expanding wealth is an illusory façade masking a teetering tower of debt – the greatest the world has seen. It will collapse, in a disaster of our own making.

It was the bloodiest clash between Chinese police and civilians since Tiananmen Square. On a December evening in 2005, hundreds of paramilitary police descended on Dongzhou, a fishing village in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. At seven o’clock, security forces fired tear gas canisters erupting into a crowd that had gathered to protest a power plant being built in the hills. The demonstrators didn’t disperse, so at eight o’clock, police began shooting into the dirt with their AK-47s. “Finally,” one witness said, “at about 10 pm, they started killing people.”

In the law of the market, businesses charge whatever they think the market will bear – except in medicine, where costs come weighed with moral dilemmas. Now, some countries are telling drug companies they won’t pay.