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The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?
These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that "you can make it if you try". And the consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fuelled populist protest, with the triumph of Brexit and election of Donald Trump.
Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarized politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. Sandel highlights the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.
Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarized politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. Sandel highlights the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2020
About the author
Michael J. Sandel
34 books2,064 followersMichael J. Sandel is an American political philosopher who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1980. He is best known for the Harvard course 'Justice', which is available to view online, and for his critique of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
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May 30, 2021
I’ve read a few books on merit now – they should come up if you search my shelves – and I would recommend any of them, but this is a particularly good telling of the ‘anti-merit’ argument. The warnings about the dangers of meritocracy are literally (and I mean literally, not figuratively) as old as the term itself. That’s because the guy who coined the term in 1958, Michael Young, did so as the premise for his novel on a future dystopia. In fact, he was so annoyed that the term was being used for the opposite of his intention that he wrote this article for The Guardian in 2001, pointedly directed at Tony Blair. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...
How we use ‘meritocracy’ today would be as if people took up Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal by setting up a butcher shop selling “A young healthy child well nursed … (as) a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food.” But then, if history does one thing particularly well, it is irony.
A large part of the problem with ‘merit’ (and its appeal, too, I guess) is that it encourages us to believe we are autochthony – that we belong were we have sprouted and have sprung fully formed without ancestors or obligations. Meritocracy matches the excessive individualism of our age. What I found particularly interesting in this – well, interesting in a deeply depressing way – was the discussion on Chinese students who felt those with more merit ought to be able to buy organs from those with less merit because the lives of the merit-full are worth more than those of life’s losers. We are often told that the Chinese are much more community minded than we are in the west, but creating a dog-eats-dog society inevitably produces dogs that eat dogs – it is hardly surprising.
Many of the books I’ve read on merit refer to Bourdieu and his ideas of habitus and social distinction. That is, that nothing helps to ensure that the already advantaged will remain advantaged than promoting equality of opportunity. Bourdieu’s point is that if you want everyone to think that the game isn’t rigged, you make the game hard. That way, those with the greatest access to the skills and dispositions rewarded by a society will inevitably be more likely to be among the winners, but because they have had to work hard to achieve the benefits of their position, they will assume everyone who matched their efforts would be similarly rewarded. Since this is self-evidently not the case, there needs to be a deeper explanation for social disadvantage, distinction and differentiation – and this proves to be the ongoing appeal of eugenics. While you might have thought the Second World War would have been enough to have dissuaded people from such theories, eugenic beliefs have, instead, proven to morph with every generation: E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker. And the appeal of eugenics is not limited to those on the right. Noam Chomsky’s linguistics depend upon essentially Kantian a priori innate faculties.
All the same, this book owes more to the theories of John Rawls than to Bourdieu. A central idea here is the notion of fairness. What would you consider to be a fair society, and what would that look like if you could decide on the features of those society before you found out where you have been allocated in that society. You know, a feudal society looks pretty damn good if you can be assured of being the king – but pretty crap if you are going to be a serf. We are all too likely to come up with great reasons after the event for why we deserve our position in society, but too often that is based on attributing moral value to what otherwise looks like blind luck. While we smile at ideas like the divine right of kings now, we ignore the fact that being born affluent in the affluent west is about as much a lucky spin of the wheel as being born a lord was in the Middle Ages. Today merit serves much the same purpose as the divine right of kings, also effectively restricting social movement due to the unequal distribution of dispositions, social habits and rewards.
Rawls’s argument is that even being lucky enough to have been born with skills that are highly rewarded in the society you find yourself living in – tennis playing skills or merchant banking skills, say, rather than, say, num-chuk skills or doe hunting skills – is a matter of luck, and few of us would attribute higher moral entitlement or justified reward to ‘the lucky’. The point of ‘merit’ is meant to be that the rewards gained are ‘earnt’. But rewards are always social, (for example, money makes no sense at all outside of a social context) and so the skills you acquire are deeply social and only derive their value from within the social system you happen to be born within. That is, rather than being solely down to your hard work or effort, your success is ultimately related to your social context.
Unfortunately, our society stresses the exact opposite of this situated ‘mutual obligation’ notion of how the world works. Rather, our society stresses the myth that we all begin the race on the same starting line without handicaps and that the places earnt in the race of life are purely down to our own efforts – based solely on hard work, resilience, delayed gratification and other self-serving lies.
If merit were true, of course, those who lose the race of life would have no claims on those who win. In fact, the opposite would be the case. To reward the less worthy is to remove incentives from the worthy, while incentivising laziness and bad workmanship. The moral obligation is some sort of version of the Matthew Principle, to take from those who have not, and give to those who have in abundance. And this is what we witness all of the time today – with the withdrawal of social supports justified as necessary to provide incentives.
The book spends a lot of time looking at the political consequences of this shift towards the myth of meritocracy. One of those consequences being the shift of allegiance of the white working class in the US towards the Republican party, and the working class in Britain over the Brexit years towards the Tories, and you could easily do the same with ‘Howard’s Battlers’ here in Australia.
In today’s world, merit is also strongly correlated with tertiary education. The author discusses the impact of this – where Clinton went on to overwhelmingly win the college educated vote, but where Trump had good reason to say he ‘loved the poorly educated’. And Clinton went on to describe those how had once been the core support base of the Democratic Party ‘a basket of deplorables’.
Escaping the fate of the poorly educated is a major theme here too – there is an extensive discussion on the various scandals involving college admission and how these are one of the few things that receive cross-party support in the US now. But what is interesting here is that this merely proves that ‘meritocracy’ is a myth that is fundamental across the whole of US society. The reason why people will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get their children into a top-ranking college and the sorting machine this implies and the systemic advantages some receive in these tracks to success receive far less attention, but are just as rigged. Do you want proof? Donald Trump and his children attended a top-ranking college. As the book says, “Trump himself reportedly gave $1.5 million to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania around the time his children Donald Jr. and Ivanka attended the school.”
Merit is a myth based on self-satisfaction for the winners and self-loathing for the losers, and this is what sustains the myth. As Bourdieu says of his ‘habitus’, it only works when everyone believes in it, it is not a conspiracy of one group fooling another, everyone is fooled, or no one is.
We are much more intimately connected to everyone else in society than we generally admit. Those connections are becoming a matter of life and death now. To tackle the issues that are likely to end human habitation on this planet: such as, climate change, nuclear war, gross and growing inequality – we are going to need to think less about ‘ourselves’ and more about our communities and our common humanity. It is not at all clear to me that we will ever be able to free ourselves from the myth of merit – it offers many short-term comforts – but if we do not, I cannot see a way out of our current path toward annihilation.
How we use ‘meritocracy’ today would be as if people took up Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal by setting up a butcher shop selling “A young healthy child well nursed … (as) a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food.” But then, if history does one thing particularly well, it is irony.
A large part of the problem with ‘merit’ (and its appeal, too, I guess) is that it encourages us to believe we are autochthony – that we belong were we have sprouted and have sprung fully formed without ancestors or obligations. Meritocracy matches the excessive individualism of our age. What I found particularly interesting in this – well, interesting in a deeply depressing way – was the discussion on Chinese students who felt those with more merit ought to be able to buy organs from those with less merit because the lives of the merit-full are worth more than those of life’s losers. We are often told that the Chinese are much more community minded than we are in the west, but creating a dog-eats-dog society inevitably produces dogs that eat dogs – it is hardly surprising.
Many of the books I’ve read on merit refer to Bourdieu and his ideas of habitus and social distinction. That is, that nothing helps to ensure that the already advantaged will remain advantaged than promoting equality of opportunity. Bourdieu’s point is that if you want everyone to think that the game isn’t rigged, you make the game hard. That way, those with the greatest access to the skills and dispositions rewarded by a society will inevitably be more likely to be among the winners, but because they have had to work hard to achieve the benefits of their position, they will assume everyone who matched their efforts would be similarly rewarded. Since this is self-evidently not the case, there needs to be a deeper explanation for social disadvantage, distinction and differentiation – and this proves to be the ongoing appeal of eugenics. While you might have thought the Second World War would have been enough to have dissuaded people from such theories, eugenic beliefs have, instead, proven to morph with every generation: E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker. And the appeal of eugenics is not limited to those on the right. Noam Chomsky’s linguistics depend upon essentially Kantian a priori innate faculties.
All the same, this book owes more to the theories of John Rawls than to Bourdieu. A central idea here is the notion of fairness. What would you consider to be a fair society, and what would that look like if you could decide on the features of those society before you found out where you have been allocated in that society. You know, a feudal society looks pretty damn good if you can be assured of being the king – but pretty crap if you are going to be a serf. We are all too likely to come up with great reasons after the event for why we deserve our position in society, but too often that is based on attributing moral value to what otherwise looks like blind luck. While we smile at ideas like the divine right of kings now, we ignore the fact that being born affluent in the affluent west is about as much a lucky spin of the wheel as being born a lord was in the Middle Ages. Today merit serves much the same purpose as the divine right of kings, also effectively restricting social movement due to the unequal distribution of dispositions, social habits and rewards.
Rawls’s argument is that even being lucky enough to have been born with skills that are highly rewarded in the society you find yourself living in – tennis playing skills or merchant banking skills, say, rather than, say, num-chuk skills or doe hunting skills – is a matter of luck, and few of us would attribute higher moral entitlement or justified reward to ‘the lucky’. The point of ‘merit’ is meant to be that the rewards gained are ‘earnt’. But rewards are always social, (for example, money makes no sense at all outside of a social context) and so the skills you acquire are deeply social and only derive their value from within the social system you happen to be born within. That is, rather than being solely down to your hard work or effort, your success is ultimately related to your social context.
Unfortunately, our society stresses the exact opposite of this situated ‘mutual obligation’ notion of how the world works. Rather, our society stresses the myth that we all begin the race on the same starting line without handicaps and that the places earnt in the race of life are purely down to our own efforts – based solely on hard work, resilience, delayed gratification and other self-serving lies.
If merit were true, of course, those who lose the race of life would have no claims on those who win. In fact, the opposite would be the case. To reward the less worthy is to remove incentives from the worthy, while incentivising laziness and bad workmanship. The moral obligation is some sort of version of the Matthew Principle, to take from those who have not, and give to those who have in abundance. And this is what we witness all of the time today – with the withdrawal of social supports justified as necessary to provide incentives.
The book spends a lot of time looking at the political consequences of this shift towards the myth of meritocracy. One of those consequences being the shift of allegiance of the white working class in the US towards the Republican party, and the working class in Britain over the Brexit years towards the Tories, and you could easily do the same with ‘Howard’s Battlers’ here in Australia.
In today’s world, merit is also strongly correlated with tertiary education. The author discusses the impact of this – where Clinton went on to overwhelmingly win the college educated vote, but where Trump had good reason to say he ‘loved the poorly educated’. And Clinton went on to describe those how had once been the core support base of the Democratic Party ‘a basket of deplorables’.
Escaping the fate of the poorly educated is a major theme here too – there is an extensive discussion on the various scandals involving college admission and how these are one of the few things that receive cross-party support in the US now. But what is interesting here is that this merely proves that ‘meritocracy’ is a myth that is fundamental across the whole of US society. The reason why people will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get their children into a top-ranking college and the sorting machine this implies and the systemic advantages some receive in these tracks to success receive far less attention, but are just as rigged. Do you want proof? Donald Trump and his children attended a top-ranking college. As the book says, “Trump himself reportedly gave $1.5 million to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania around the time his children Donald Jr. and Ivanka attended the school.”
Merit is a myth based on self-satisfaction for the winners and self-loathing for the losers, and this is what sustains the myth. As Bourdieu says of his ‘habitus’, it only works when everyone believes in it, it is not a conspiracy of one group fooling another, everyone is fooled, or no one is.
We are much more intimately connected to everyone else in society than we generally admit. Those connections are becoming a matter of life and death now. To tackle the issues that are likely to end human habitation on this planet: such as, climate change, nuclear war, gross and growing inequality – we are going to need to think less about ‘ourselves’ and more about our communities and our common humanity. It is not at all clear to me that we will ever be able to free ourselves from the myth of merit – it offers many short-term comforts – but if we do not, I cannot see a way out of our current path toward annihilation.
September 6, 2022
What could possibly be wrong with a political and social structure that allows citizens to rise to the level of wealth and prestige equivalent to their ability? Many politicians proudly proclaim that their country is a place where anyone who goes to college and works hard can have their dreams come true to achieve a prosperous and happy life. In light of all these positive comments many readers of this book will be surprised to learn that the term meritocracy was originally coined in 1958 by sociologist Michael Dunlop Young as a predicted dystopian future worse than the hereditary hierarchy that it replaced. This book postulates that Young's vision was correct.
This book highlights two deficiencies of meritocracy as practiced in the USA and UK. One is that it fails to adhere to meritocratic principles, and this can be demonstrated by the fact that upward mobility does not exist to the level promised. An example of this is the fact that the best predictor of obtaining a college degree is wealth of the parents, not I.Q. Various studies have shown that those born in poverty are more likely to rise to higher economic levels in adulthood in many European countries than it is true in the United States. Even China has greater rate of upward economic mobility than the USA.
The other more important problem with meritocracy is that the winners feel they deserve their position, and the hubris fostered by this belief causes them to be blind to a spirit of the common good. Conversely, the majority of the population without college degrees resent the excessive pride and self-confidence exuded from those with degrees. Consequently, unconscious feelings of humiliation on the part of those at the bottom of the economic ladder makes them feel alienated from any sense of common good. Instead only winners and losers are apparent, and they are the losers. Any spirit of common good is thus lost within the multiple animosities created by meritocracy.
Economic globalization is an example of an issue that fosters this divide in a country's population by failing to address the feelings of loss among the working class when their jobs move overseas. Economists have convincingly concluded that everyone profits when trade barriers do not exist. Their answer to the plight of those who lose their jobs from globalization is that the the economic growth fostered by globalization will make possible programs of training and other adjustments to aid misplaced workers.
Again there are two problems. One is that the promised aid to misplaced workers didn't happen. The second problem is that the economists are promising distributive justice, not contributive justice. Distributive justice is perceived as receiving aid to repair a damage caused by globalization. This diminishes the integrity of the recipients. What blue collar workers want is contributive justice where their work is recognized as being valuable and part of the solution. Only then can there be a sense of common good.
So how is contributive justice achieved? This book offers several potential changes that would promote the common good.
1. Make entrance into elite Universities by way of lottery. This would take away the sense of deservedness on the part of those who get in. This book suggests additional details to make the proposed lottery workable. Entrance into the lottery would be limited to those prequalified by ability and academic records to assure academic integrity. Additional suggestions are made for ways of maintaining affirmative action for minorities. One detail I found interesting was the suggestion that Universities could continue to attract some large donations by publicly auctioning off a select few entrant positions which would help erase any suggestion of intellectual superiority of the part of the beneficiaries.
2. Provide a wage subsidy for low income workers. The government would provide a supplementary payment for each hour worked by a low wage employee based on an hourly wage rate. The wage subsidy is in a way the opposite of a payroll tax. Rather than deduct a certain amount from each workers earnings, the government would contribute a certain amount in hopes of enabling low income workers to make a decent living even if they lack the skills to maintain a substantial market wage.
3. Do away with the payroll tax and replace the lost revenue by taxing consumption, wealth, and financial transactions. This change would show respect and honor the importance and value of labor. It would also treat the investment world as deserving of the equivalent of a sin tax. Currently, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than labor. This book says this makes no sense. Traditionally financial investments are expected to create jobs, but the financial world has evolved into a world of speculation far removed from creating jobs.
I close this review with the following excerpt from the book which I think serves well as a final summary to the book:
The following link is to a WP opinion piece by George Will:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...
This book highlights two deficiencies of meritocracy as practiced in the USA and UK. One is that it fails to adhere to meritocratic principles, and this can be demonstrated by the fact that upward mobility does not exist to the level promised. An example of this is the fact that the best predictor of obtaining a college degree is wealth of the parents, not I.Q. Various studies have shown that those born in poverty are more likely to rise to higher economic levels in adulthood in many European countries than it is true in the United States. Even China has greater rate of upward economic mobility than the USA.
The other more important problem with meritocracy is that the winners feel they deserve their position, and the hubris fostered by this belief causes them to be blind to a spirit of the common good. Conversely, the majority of the population without college degrees resent the excessive pride and self-confidence exuded from those with degrees. Consequently, unconscious feelings of humiliation on the part of those at the bottom of the economic ladder makes them feel alienated from any sense of common good. Instead only winners and losers are apparent, and they are the losers. Any spirit of common good is thus lost within the multiple animosities created by meritocracy.
Economic globalization is an example of an issue that fosters this divide in a country's population by failing to address the feelings of loss among the working class when their jobs move overseas. Economists have convincingly concluded that everyone profits when trade barriers do not exist. Their answer to the plight of those who lose their jobs from globalization is that the the economic growth fostered by globalization will make possible programs of training and other adjustments to aid misplaced workers.
Again there are two problems. One is that the promised aid to misplaced workers didn't happen. The second problem is that the economists are promising distributive justice, not contributive justice. Distributive justice is perceived as receiving aid to repair a damage caused by globalization. This diminishes the integrity of the recipients. What blue collar workers want is contributive justice where their work is recognized as being valuable and part of the solution. Only then can there be a sense of common good.
So how is contributive justice achieved? This book offers several potential changes that would promote the common good.
1. Make entrance into elite Universities by way of lottery. This would take away the sense of deservedness on the part of those who get in. This book suggests additional details to make the proposed lottery workable. Entrance into the lottery would be limited to those prequalified by ability and academic records to assure academic integrity. Additional suggestions are made for ways of maintaining affirmative action for minorities. One detail I found interesting was the suggestion that Universities could continue to attract some large donations by publicly auctioning off a select few entrant positions which would help erase any suggestion of intellectual superiority of the part of the beneficiaries.
2. Provide a wage subsidy for low income workers. The government would provide a supplementary payment for each hour worked by a low wage employee based on an hourly wage rate. The wage subsidy is in a way the opposite of a payroll tax. Rather than deduct a certain amount from each workers earnings, the government would contribute a certain amount in hopes of enabling low income workers to make a decent living even if they lack the skills to maintain a substantial market wage.
3. Do away with the payroll tax and replace the lost revenue by taxing consumption, wealth, and financial transactions. This change would show respect and honor the importance and value of labor. It would also treat the investment world as deserving of the equivalent of a sin tax. Currently, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than labor. This book says this makes no sense. Traditionally financial investments are expected to create jobs, but the financial world has evolved into a world of speculation far removed from creating jobs.
I close this review with the following excerpt from the book which I think serves well as a final summary to the book:
The meritocratic conviction that people deserve whatever riches the market bestows on their talents makes solidarity an almost impossible project. For why do the successful owe anything to the less-advantaged members of society? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that, for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient; finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents is our good fortune, not our due. A lively sense of the contingency of our lot can inspire a certain humility: “There, but for the grace of God, or the accident of birth, or the mystery of fate, go I.” Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life. (p. 227)I think Sandel makes some good points in this book and he defends his observations and proposals more thoroughly than represented by my review. I think the book deserves to be widely read and its message incorporated within the body politic.
The following link is to a WP opinion piece by George Will:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...
July 25, 2021
The Politics of Humiliation
Anyone familiar with differential calculus can recognise the fundamental logical problem of attributing responsibility for results (pay for performance; test scores; organisation success; etc) to an individual. The contribution of any one factor (person) to a total can only be assessed when all other factors (social background, level of education, genetic composition, ethnicity, etc.) are held constant. So for example, in the question of performance pay, one must be able to discern the relative importance to the salesman’s ‘numbers’ in the context of the entire organisation from the receptionists, secretaries, and researchers, to the scientists, production staff, and managers. Holding these things constant is obviously an impossible task.
Nevertheless we (those blessed for our contributions) seem bent on the idea of assigning personal responsibility for what happens in life. At least when we consider those less well off (and sometimes those better off) than ourselves. We deserve (at least) all that we have. They deserve (and more) exactly what they lack. The psychology and sociology of the meritocracy is pervasive. And the economic, political, and social effects that should have become obvious through masses of academic research over decades have surfaced most acutely in the election of Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton was right - Trump’s followers are indeed the losers in the meritocratic façade. What she didn’t get is that they want to be winners.
Michael Sandel recognises the psychological, social, economic, and political effects of our commitment to merit. But his primary concern is the morality of a merit-based society not its practical consequences. What interests me most about his approach is his identification of Christianity as the source of our effective deification of merit and the main obstacle to our overcoming its tragedies. I think he is justified in doing this; and his brief history of relevant theology is insightful. But I think he is wrong about his inference that personal merit is a Judaeo-Christian idea. Merit is indeed something that appears in Hebrew Scriptures and traditions, but like many other aspects of Judaism, Christianity transformed this idea into something quite unrecognisable in the matrix culture.
The most obvious transformation in Christianity is the notion of personal salvation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is Israel, a corporate body not individuals as such, from whom YHWH demands obedience. The individuals mentioned are always tropes for the larger society. Everyone in Israel shares both divine favour and punishment. Early medieval Judaism did develop the idea of the Zachuth Avot, the Merits of the Fathers, through which the ‘goodness’ of Israel’s founders was considered somehow available to all Jews in mitigation of their faults. I suspect that this was in response to the emerging Christian doctrine of the infinite merit achieved by Jesus through his death. But the difference in the two is crucial. The Zachuth is an inter-generational assistance to avoid and atone for fault; Christ’s merit, being infinite, is a complete expiation of fault.
Enter the man, Paul of Tarsus, whose interpretation of what he was told about Jesus is keyed precisely on the idea of the infinitely meritorious death of Christ. If this death wipes out the need for God to punish those who transgress (in later ages called the Atonement Theory), then the only thing necessary to assure one’s eternal salvation is the acceptance of this ‘fact’ as a matter of unshakeable belief. This is uniquely Pauline not Abrahamic. Thus begins the persistent struggle in Christianity to explain the problematic relation Faith/Works. Sandel traces this struggle (with the help of folk like Max Weber) in its various manifestations - Grace/Effort; Providence/Just Deserts; Luck/Character - and shows how its resolution in modern culture is a self-confirming doctrine of Whiggish smugness. Success is a mark of both hard work and divine favour. The meritocracy, in other words, is an institutional embodiment of Christianity. It serves to unite the diverse sects into a greater whole that includes even the most ardent atheists.
Isn’t it interesting that the Trump followers are the most conservative (that is to say, authoritarian, racist, misogynistic, as well as Christian) in the population? Despite their tendency toward violence, they really don’t want a revolution. Their ideal is merely to impose the same kind of humiliation which they have been subject to on the current social winners. They don’t want respect; they want revenge. But ultimately they are trapped in the same doubts about respectability/worth/significance as are their more successful compatriots. Meritocracy makes us all losers. But unless the consequences of Pauline Christianity and its secular residue are owned up to, we’re likely to just keep digging that hole deeper.
Anyone familiar with differential calculus can recognise the fundamental logical problem of attributing responsibility for results (pay for performance; test scores; organisation success; etc) to an individual. The contribution of any one factor (person) to a total can only be assessed when all other factors (social background, level of education, genetic composition, ethnicity, etc.) are held constant. So for example, in the question of performance pay, one must be able to discern the relative importance to the salesman’s ‘numbers’ in the context of the entire organisation from the receptionists, secretaries, and researchers, to the scientists, production staff, and managers. Holding these things constant is obviously an impossible task.
Nevertheless we (those blessed for our contributions) seem bent on the idea of assigning personal responsibility for what happens in life. At least when we consider those less well off (and sometimes those better off) than ourselves. We deserve (at least) all that we have. They deserve (and more) exactly what they lack. The psychology and sociology of the meritocracy is pervasive. And the economic, political, and social effects that should have become obvious through masses of academic research over decades have surfaced most acutely in the election of Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton was right - Trump’s followers are indeed the losers in the meritocratic façade. What she didn’t get is that they want to be winners.
Michael Sandel recognises the psychological, social, economic, and political effects of our commitment to merit. But his primary concern is the morality of a merit-based society not its practical consequences. What interests me most about his approach is his identification of Christianity as the source of our effective deification of merit and the main obstacle to our overcoming its tragedies. I think he is justified in doing this; and his brief history of relevant theology is insightful. But I think he is wrong about his inference that personal merit is a Judaeo-Christian idea. Merit is indeed something that appears in Hebrew Scriptures and traditions, but like many other aspects of Judaism, Christianity transformed this idea into something quite unrecognisable in the matrix culture.
The most obvious transformation in Christianity is the notion of personal salvation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is Israel, a corporate body not individuals as such, from whom YHWH demands obedience. The individuals mentioned are always tropes for the larger society. Everyone in Israel shares both divine favour and punishment. Early medieval Judaism did develop the idea of the Zachuth Avot, the Merits of the Fathers, through which the ‘goodness’ of Israel’s founders was considered somehow available to all Jews in mitigation of their faults. I suspect that this was in response to the emerging Christian doctrine of the infinite merit achieved by Jesus through his death. But the difference in the two is crucial. The Zachuth is an inter-generational assistance to avoid and atone for fault; Christ’s merit, being infinite, is a complete expiation of fault.
Enter the man, Paul of Tarsus, whose interpretation of what he was told about Jesus is keyed precisely on the idea of the infinitely meritorious death of Christ. If this death wipes out the need for God to punish those who transgress (in later ages called the Atonement Theory), then the only thing necessary to assure one’s eternal salvation is the acceptance of this ‘fact’ as a matter of unshakeable belief. This is uniquely Pauline not Abrahamic. Thus begins the persistent struggle in Christianity to explain the problematic relation Faith/Works. Sandel traces this struggle (with the help of folk like Max Weber) in its various manifestations - Grace/Effort; Providence/Just Deserts; Luck/Character - and shows how its resolution in modern culture is a self-confirming doctrine of Whiggish smugness. Success is a mark of both hard work and divine favour. The meritocracy, in other words, is an institutional embodiment of Christianity. It serves to unite the diverse sects into a greater whole that includes even the most ardent atheists.
Isn’t it interesting that the Trump followers are the most conservative (that is to say, authoritarian, racist, misogynistic, as well as Christian) in the population? Despite their tendency toward violence, they really don’t want a revolution. Their ideal is merely to impose the same kind of humiliation which they have been subject to on the current social winners. They don’t want respect; they want revenge. But ultimately they are trapped in the same doubts about respectability/worth/significance as are their more successful compatriots. Meritocracy makes us all losers. But unless the consequences of Pauline Christianity and its secular residue are owned up to, we’re likely to just keep digging that hole deeper.
June 15, 2020
“The more we think of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.” This is the framework for Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit. A noble sentiment, it is an attack on the so-called meritocracy the USA runs on. Unfortunately, it’s a difficult read and doesn’t solve any problems. And it is often simply misguided.
Meritocracy is a system in which people rise to their level of incompetence – just slightly beyond where they should be, and are rewarded according to how high they rise. This is as opposed to an aristocracy, in which everyone is born into their role, and cannot move up in society. Both are awful, and neither one of them describes the reality of the USA.
Meritocracy looks good on paper, but in practice it is a disaster. Suicides of despair are soaring in the land of meritocracy, and not nearly as common where aristocracy is the rule. In a meritocracy, those who make it claim they earned it alone and by themselves, and look down on those who didn’t. Those who don’t make it cannot blame the system; they can only blame themselves. Life becomes a race for credentials, from a very young age. Parents take childhoods away from them, packing their lives with classes and memberships. The list of negatives about meritocracy is endless.
Sandel teaches this at Harvard, so a lot of what he has to say pertains to higher education. Rich parents bribe their way into admissions for their kids, or if they went to the school themselves, their kids get a pass to get in. Or they can bribe the administration with a new lab or building or chair to get their kids in. This is really the kind of meritocracy the USA operates.
The whole premise is that a certificate from a top school will keep them in the 1%. So the rich crowd out everyone else to take those spots. It’s all about the résumé and the letters after the name. Doesn’t matter how they got them or if they can even act like they represent what the letters stand for. The whole country is obsessed with credentials. But as Sandel and many others have shown, Barack Obama’s overcredentialed cabinet was incapable of remaking the country, while FDR’s barely high school cabinet changed the whole world. Obligatory fake meritocracy is as rigid as an aristocracy.
There are lots of examples to show credentials are no panacea. Sandel shows that in pro sports, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Nolan Ryan, was the 294th draft pick when he (barely) got in. Tom Brady, possibly football’s greatest quarterback was 199th. So demonstrated merit does not automatically mean the best or wisest choice. Meritocracy is like eugenics for the economy.
The best point Sandel makes about credentialization is that “Turning Congress and parliaments into the exclusive preserve of the credentialed classes has not made government more effective, but it has made it less representative.” The fact is only a third of Americans have college degrees, and the weaponization of credentials has totally alienated the populace into “draining the swamp” with a totally uncredentialed and unqualified president. Donald Trump is the best argument against American meritocracy, and is precisely what the founders tried to prevent in the constitution.
The facts, as Sandel finds them, are that inequality becomes so refined in a meritocracy that the rich do not even associate with the common people. They have private jets, skybox seats and numerous homes around the world. They hide their money in overseas trusts so they pay even less in taxes than they are required. They actually are the new aristocracy, so why pretend otherwise? In a real meritocracy, the talented should rise to the top. That’s not how it works in the USA.
The USA has lost the entire concept of the common good. Today it appears to mean only higher Gross National Product. In Sandel’s writing, there is nothing to consider beyond that. It’s just about national wealth. But there should be more to it than that. To me what is missing is that membership should have its privileges. As the richest nation on Earth, the USA should offer special treatment to its members. Healthcare should be a right, for example, not reserved only for the rich. But that would mean equality. Instead, Sandel focuses on how and whether the rich should be forced to pay taxes that might benefit those less successful. That’s not it at all. But it’s his book.
The country is supposedly built on mobility; anyone can get ahead if they try. This is a catchphrase used by politicians, along with “The more you learn, the more you earn” and other totally bogus distillations of meritocracy. Sandel cites “The Lord helps those who help themselves”, and “Being on the right side of history” and others that presidents love to pad their speeches with. Unfortunately, so does Sandel. He spends endless pages showing how and when those phrases are used, the number of times various presidents have used them and which presidents have used various ones of them more than all other presidents combined. He says “When politicians repeat a hallowed verity with mind-numbing frequency, there is reason to suspect that it is no longer true.” But then he repeats his scoring and counting and listing again, and again, as if it were a totally new concept each time. The book could stand a total reorg.
The best point he makes about American mobility is its total untruth. He says “It is easier to rise from poverty in Canada or Germany, Denmark or other European countries than it is in the United States.” Yet 70% of Americans think the poor can make it out of poverty on their own, thanks to America’s unique attribute of mobility. This alone puts the lie to meritocracy in the USA.
Sandel also repeats himself endlessly on other premises, concepts and simple citations. He will introduce the same author of the same book, several times. He will describe the same idea every time he uses it, as if the reader had never seen it before, in the previous chapter.
Even without this book, it is pretty obvious that American meritocracy is a fraud. It stratifies society, increases inequality and solves no problems. America is not better for it. It is a meritocracy in name only.
The common good is a concept that has been off the American table for far too long, and it is the reason I wanted to review this book. But the book skims over and perverts the common good into something unrecognizable. This is not the book to base a better policy on. While Sandel makes some eminently quotable points, the book is mostly annoying. The topic deserves better.
David Wineberg
Meritocracy is a system in which people rise to their level of incompetence – just slightly beyond where they should be, and are rewarded according to how high they rise. This is as opposed to an aristocracy, in which everyone is born into their role, and cannot move up in society. Both are awful, and neither one of them describes the reality of the USA.
Meritocracy looks good on paper, but in practice it is a disaster. Suicides of despair are soaring in the land of meritocracy, and not nearly as common where aristocracy is the rule. In a meritocracy, those who make it claim they earned it alone and by themselves, and look down on those who didn’t. Those who don’t make it cannot blame the system; they can only blame themselves. Life becomes a race for credentials, from a very young age. Parents take childhoods away from them, packing their lives with classes and memberships. The list of negatives about meritocracy is endless.
Sandel teaches this at Harvard, so a lot of what he has to say pertains to higher education. Rich parents bribe their way into admissions for their kids, or if they went to the school themselves, their kids get a pass to get in. Or they can bribe the administration with a new lab or building or chair to get their kids in. This is really the kind of meritocracy the USA operates.
The whole premise is that a certificate from a top school will keep them in the 1%. So the rich crowd out everyone else to take those spots. It’s all about the résumé and the letters after the name. Doesn’t matter how they got them or if they can even act like they represent what the letters stand for. The whole country is obsessed with credentials. But as Sandel and many others have shown, Barack Obama’s overcredentialed cabinet was incapable of remaking the country, while FDR’s barely high school cabinet changed the whole world. Obligatory fake meritocracy is as rigid as an aristocracy.
There are lots of examples to show credentials are no panacea. Sandel shows that in pro sports, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Nolan Ryan, was the 294th draft pick when he (barely) got in. Tom Brady, possibly football’s greatest quarterback was 199th. So demonstrated merit does not automatically mean the best or wisest choice. Meritocracy is like eugenics for the economy.
The best point Sandel makes about credentialization is that “Turning Congress and parliaments into the exclusive preserve of the credentialed classes has not made government more effective, but it has made it less representative.” The fact is only a third of Americans have college degrees, and the weaponization of credentials has totally alienated the populace into “draining the swamp” with a totally uncredentialed and unqualified president. Donald Trump is the best argument against American meritocracy, and is precisely what the founders tried to prevent in the constitution.
The facts, as Sandel finds them, are that inequality becomes so refined in a meritocracy that the rich do not even associate with the common people. They have private jets, skybox seats and numerous homes around the world. They hide their money in overseas trusts so they pay even less in taxes than they are required. They actually are the new aristocracy, so why pretend otherwise? In a real meritocracy, the talented should rise to the top. That’s not how it works in the USA.
The USA has lost the entire concept of the common good. Today it appears to mean only higher Gross National Product. In Sandel’s writing, there is nothing to consider beyond that. It’s just about national wealth. But there should be more to it than that. To me what is missing is that membership should have its privileges. As the richest nation on Earth, the USA should offer special treatment to its members. Healthcare should be a right, for example, not reserved only for the rich. But that would mean equality. Instead, Sandel focuses on how and whether the rich should be forced to pay taxes that might benefit those less successful. That’s not it at all. But it’s his book.
The country is supposedly built on mobility; anyone can get ahead if they try. This is a catchphrase used by politicians, along with “The more you learn, the more you earn” and other totally bogus distillations of meritocracy. Sandel cites “The Lord helps those who help themselves”, and “Being on the right side of history” and others that presidents love to pad their speeches with. Unfortunately, so does Sandel. He spends endless pages showing how and when those phrases are used, the number of times various presidents have used them and which presidents have used various ones of them more than all other presidents combined. He says “When politicians repeat a hallowed verity with mind-numbing frequency, there is reason to suspect that it is no longer true.” But then he repeats his scoring and counting and listing again, and again, as if it were a totally new concept each time. The book could stand a total reorg.
The best point he makes about American mobility is its total untruth. He says “It is easier to rise from poverty in Canada or Germany, Denmark or other European countries than it is in the United States.” Yet 70% of Americans think the poor can make it out of poverty on their own, thanks to America’s unique attribute of mobility. This alone puts the lie to meritocracy in the USA.
Sandel also repeats himself endlessly on other premises, concepts and simple citations. He will introduce the same author of the same book, several times. He will describe the same idea every time he uses it, as if the reader had never seen it before, in the previous chapter.
Even without this book, it is pretty obvious that American meritocracy is a fraud. It stratifies society, increases inequality and solves no problems. America is not better for it. It is a meritocracy in name only.
The common good is a concept that has been off the American table for far too long, and it is the reason I wanted to review this book. But the book skims over and perverts the common good into something unrecognizable. This is not the book to base a better policy on. While Sandel makes some eminently quotable points, the book is mostly annoying. The topic deserves better.
David Wineberg
December 9, 2020
A meritocracy is a political system in which economic goods and political power are vested in individuals on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than on wealth, social class, or other arbitrary prejudices.
The principle is simple and easily illustrated with an example. Let’s say you’re hiring someone to perform a job, in this case a mechanic to repair your car. Who should you choose? In the interest of both efficiency (the mechanic's capacity to quickly make affordable, quality repairs) and fairness (rewarding people for quality work), you would want to select the mechanic with the best reputation and ability—in other words, on the basis of merit.
Choosing a mechanic along any other dimension—race, social class, religion, political orientation, gender, etc.—would be both unfair and inefficient for both you and the mechanic, who, through his or her own talents and effort, has established a reputation for quality work.
This principle, applied to the whole of society, including to its governing classes, constitutes the foundation of a meritocracy. Isn’t it obvious, then, that meritocracy is the ideal to which every society should strive?
The answer, according to political philosopher Michael Sandel, is no. In The Tyranny of Merit, Sandel explores the often-ignored societal costs of living within a meritocracy. While Sandel is not making the claim that the merit-based allocation of jobs and capital should be eliminated entirely, he is making the case that it should be tempered by a richer conception of equality and the common good.
So, what are the problems with meritocracy? First, the ideals of meritocracy are nowhere near being met in practice, at least not in the United States. Despite assertions from politicians across the political spectrum, the idea that “you can make it as far as your talents and efforts will take you” is nothing other than empty rhetoric. As Sandel wrote:
“The American faith in the ability to rise through effort and grit no longer fits the facts on the ground. In the decades following World War II, Americans could expect that their children would do better, economically, than they had. Today, this is no longer the case. Of children born in the 1940s, almost all (90 percent) earned more than their parents. Of children born in the 1980s, only half surpassed their parents’ earnings.”
Sandel goes on to show that there is far less economic mobility in the US compared to several other European countries, including Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. The stark reality—what the statistics clearly show—is that if you’re born into a low-income family in the US, the overwhelming odds are that you will remain a low-income earner. This is not because talent and effort are the exclusive reserve of the wealthy; rather, it is because the wealthy have advantages and privileges that the poor simply do not.
This is due to a host of factors, including the fact that wealthy parents can buy their children better education, personal tutors, and test prep courses in preparation for admission to selective colleges, and, once their kids get accepted, can actually pay for the absurdly expensive tuition bills these colleges charge. Then, upon graduation, these privileged kids get priority in the job market for the most prestigious, high-paying jobs, often forgetting all the help they received along the way and arrogantly attributing their success solely to their own efforts while looking down on those who did not receive the same assistance.
To ascend to the top ranks of society does often require prodigious talent, intellect, and effort, but oftentimes, it conspicuously does not. Who would seriously make the claim that the majority of current US politicians represent the best and the brightest the country has to offer, in terms of intelligence, morality, or civic virtue? People obtain positions of power and economic advantages for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with their own efforts or talents, and more to do with lineage, luck, and connections.
And so the US is a “meritocracy” in name only. This fact suggests to some that the task at hand is simply to implement policies that seek to expand equality of opportunity and to get more disadvantaged youth in positions to succeed.
But Sandel notes that while expanding opportunity is a worthy cause, it is not a permanent solution. A good society cannot simply be founded on providing opportunities to escape poor conditions, but rather should be founded on trying to eliminate poor conditions in the first place. So it is not just that we are not living up to the ideals of meritocracy (where social mobility allows people to swap places with each other); it’s that the concept of a perfect meritocracy is antithetical to notions of equality grounded in civic responsibility and the common good.
Here’s the reason: even if everyone did achieve what they “deserve” based on talent, who is to say that having the talents that any particular market-based society happens to value entitles those individuals to outsized economic rewards? A key argument of the defenders of meritocracy is that people should be fairly compensated based on factors within their control and that they should not be punished for things outside of their control. But if inborn talent is largely outside of one’s control (along with being born to wealth or to advantageous circumstances), then why should those without those talents be punished with economic disadvantage?
Further, market value is not a good proxy for moral or social value; if it was, you would have to accept the conclusion that a meth dealer contributes greater value to society than a high school chemistry teacher (who stands to make significantly less money in the market). The vagaries of supply and demand do not override what the citizens of a democracy collectively determine to be of greater social value, and no democracy would ever assign greater social value to dealing drugs over teaching kids or healing the sick.
As Sandel points out, a perfect meritocracy does not solve the problem of the allocation of true social value or the problem of inequality; it only justifies inequality by ceding moral authority over to the market, which then assigns individual value based on the vagaries of supply and demand and the morally-arbitrary possession of inborn talent. This creates a new class-based system whereby those at the top of society believe they are superior (ignoring all the contingencies that helped them rise to the top) while those at the bottom come to believe that they also deserve their diminished lot in life. This fosters meritocratic hubris in society's elites and resentment in those that pursue other ways of life and work that may be valued less in the market, but that are in fact important contributions to the common good.
So what’s the alternative to meritocracy and the rhetoric of social mobility? Is the only alternative complete equality of outcome? As Sandel explains, this is a false dichotomy presented by defenders of the status quo. Rather than turning to communism, we can simply take steps—not to guarantee complete equality—but to make society more equal and less divisive. Specifically, we can do two things immediately: (1) make higher education less meritocratic and (2) restore the dignity of work.
If education is the gateway to success in our market-dominated society, then you would hope that the student bodies of the best colleges in the country were representative of the population at large. They are not. As Sandel notes:
“More than 70 percent of those who attend the hundred or so most competitive colleges in the United States come from the top quarter of the income scale; only 3 percent come from the bottom quarter.”
Additionally, if you come from a rich family (top 1 percent), you are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League school than if you come from a poor family (bottom 20 percent). Studies have also shown that even for the kids from poor families that are admitted to the most selective colleges, very few are able to move to higher income brackets.
Sandel’s solution to expand the diversity in the top US colleges includes eliminating the SAT as a requirement for admissions, as high SAT scores more closely correlate with family wealth than with the ability to excel in college. He also suggests instituting a lottery for admissions, where applicants that are deemed less likely to succeed based on grades and application materials are first eliminated. Then, the remainder are entered into a lottery and randomly chosen, so as not to prioritize the children of alumni, donors, or other arbitrary connections.
Moving on to restoring the dignity of work, Sandel shows how the market cannot be trusted to answer the question as to which jobs have the highest social value. As Sandel wrote:
“Only an ardent libertarian would insist that the wealthy casino magnate’s contribution to society is a thousand times more valuable than that of a pediatrician.”
We are not simply consumers, concerned only with the total amount of material goods and services (measured in GDP) that we can consume. What matters more to people is being a valued contributor to society, engaging in work that is considered important and respected. What has happened in the meritocratic US is that the market has overemphasized certain positions—particularly in finance—that are not necessarily involved in the production of tangible products and services, while looking down on those jobs that are actually tangibly beneficial (such as plumbing or sanitation work). And because the market overvalues elite, credentialed positions, society’s elites come to look down on those without college degrees working in the trades.
But there is dignity in all work, as everyone plays their part in the contribution to the common good. As martin Luther King Jr. said:
“One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant.”
To re-emphasize the value and dignity of work—and to de-emphasize the inflated value assigned by the market to elite positions in finance and other credentialed positions—Sandel suggests shifting the tax burden away from work and onto consumption and financial speculation. The way to do this is to lower or eliminate payroll taxes altogether and to raise revenue instead by taxing consumption, wealth, and financial transactions, including high-frequency trading, which contributes little to the real economy (in fact, high-frequency financial trading in most cases extracts money from the real economy to enrich investors who then pass their wealth on to their children).
Sandel’s suggestions make a lot of sense; by making education less meritocratic, restoring the dignity of work, shifting the tax burden away from workers, reducing inequality, and restoring social esteem among all workers, the underlying source of the politics of resentment (which is largely to blame for the election of Donald Trump) is eliminated.
I will say I’m surprised that Sandel does not consider political fixes such as sortition, or the random assignment of citizens to political office. Sandel shows how our elected representatives are more credential than ever (95 percent have a college degree) but less representative of the population (only one-third of US adults have a college degree). Further, there is little evidence that having these credentials leads to greater moral character, civic virtue, or ability to govern. Based on this, you would think that creating a system of governance where our elected representatives do not disproportionately represent the meritocratic elite would be more of a priority for Sandel to explore.
Nevertheless, this is a critically important work that questions the assumption most of us have that society should simply strive to become a perfect meritocracy. We should understand that the constant striving and competition and reliance on the market to value social activity has resulted in extreme inequality and a politics of resentment. We must understand that those that rise to the top of society do so through several contingencies that should foster feelings of humility and gratitude, not hubris, and that the path to a better society includes valuing the dignity of all work and resisting our tendency to allow the market to determine the economic and social value of our jobs.
The principle is simple and easily illustrated with an example. Let’s say you’re hiring someone to perform a job, in this case a mechanic to repair your car. Who should you choose? In the interest of both efficiency (the mechanic's capacity to quickly make affordable, quality repairs) and fairness (rewarding people for quality work), you would want to select the mechanic with the best reputation and ability—in other words, on the basis of merit.
Choosing a mechanic along any other dimension—race, social class, religion, political orientation, gender, etc.—would be both unfair and inefficient for both you and the mechanic, who, through his or her own talents and effort, has established a reputation for quality work.
This principle, applied to the whole of society, including to its governing classes, constitutes the foundation of a meritocracy. Isn’t it obvious, then, that meritocracy is the ideal to which every society should strive?
The answer, according to political philosopher Michael Sandel, is no. In The Tyranny of Merit, Sandel explores the often-ignored societal costs of living within a meritocracy. While Sandel is not making the claim that the merit-based allocation of jobs and capital should be eliminated entirely, he is making the case that it should be tempered by a richer conception of equality and the common good.
So, what are the problems with meritocracy? First, the ideals of meritocracy are nowhere near being met in practice, at least not in the United States. Despite assertions from politicians across the political spectrum, the idea that “you can make it as far as your talents and efforts will take you” is nothing other than empty rhetoric. As Sandel wrote:
“The American faith in the ability to rise through effort and grit no longer fits the facts on the ground. In the decades following World War II, Americans could expect that their children would do better, economically, than they had. Today, this is no longer the case. Of children born in the 1940s, almost all (90 percent) earned more than their parents. Of children born in the 1980s, only half surpassed their parents’ earnings.”
Sandel goes on to show that there is far less economic mobility in the US compared to several other European countries, including Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. The stark reality—what the statistics clearly show—is that if you’re born into a low-income family in the US, the overwhelming odds are that you will remain a low-income earner. This is not because talent and effort are the exclusive reserve of the wealthy; rather, it is because the wealthy have advantages and privileges that the poor simply do not.
This is due to a host of factors, including the fact that wealthy parents can buy their children better education, personal tutors, and test prep courses in preparation for admission to selective colleges, and, once their kids get accepted, can actually pay for the absurdly expensive tuition bills these colleges charge. Then, upon graduation, these privileged kids get priority in the job market for the most prestigious, high-paying jobs, often forgetting all the help they received along the way and arrogantly attributing their success solely to their own efforts while looking down on those who did not receive the same assistance.
To ascend to the top ranks of society does often require prodigious talent, intellect, and effort, but oftentimes, it conspicuously does not. Who would seriously make the claim that the majority of current US politicians represent the best and the brightest the country has to offer, in terms of intelligence, morality, or civic virtue? People obtain positions of power and economic advantages for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with their own efforts or talents, and more to do with lineage, luck, and connections.
And so the US is a “meritocracy” in name only. This fact suggests to some that the task at hand is simply to implement policies that seek to expand equality of opportunity and to get more disadvantaged youth in positions to succeed.
But Sandel notes that while expanding opportunity is a worthy cause, it is not a permanent solution. A good society cannot simply be founded on providing opportunities to escape poor conditions, but rather should be founded on trying to eliminate poor conditions in the first place. So it is not just that we are not living up to the ideals of meritocracy (where social mobility allows people to swap places with each other); it’s that the concept of a perfect meritocracy is antithetical to notions of equality grounded in civic responsibility and the common good.
Here’s the reason: even if everyone did achieve what they “deserve” based on talent, who is to say that having the talents that any particular market-based society happens to value entitles those individuals to outsized economic rewards? A key argument of the defenders of meritocracy is that people should be fairly compensated based on factors within their control and that they should not be punished for things outside of their control. But if inborn talent is largely outside of one’s control (along with being born to wealth or to advantageous circumstances), then why should those without those talents be punished with economic disadvantage?
Further, market value is not a good proxy for moral or social value; if it was, you would have to accept the conclusion that a meth dealer contributes greater value to society than a high school chemistry teacher (who stands to make significantly less money in the market). The vagaries of supply and demand do not override what the citizens of a democracy collectively determine to be of greater social value, and no democracy would ever assign greater social value to dealing drugs over teaching kids or healing the sick.
As Sandel points out, a perfect meritocracy does not solve the problem of the allocation of true social value or the problem of inequality; it only justifies inequality by ceding moral authority over to the market, which then assigns individual value based on the vagaries of supply and demand and the morally-arbitrary possession of inborn talent. This creates a new class-based system whereby those at the top of society believe they are superior (ignoring all the contingencies that helped them rise to the top) while those at the bottom come to believe that they also deserve their diminished lot in life. This fosters meritocratic hubris in society's elites and resentment in those that pursue other ways of life and work that may be valued less in the market, but that are in fact important contributions to the common good.
So what’s the alternative to meritocracy and the rhetoric of social mobility? Is the only alternative complete equality of outcome? As Sandel explains, this is a false dichotomy presented by defenders of the status quo. Rather than turning to communism, we can simply take steps—not to guarantee complete equality—but to make society more equal and less divisive. Specifically, we can do two things immediately: (1) make higher education less meritocratic and (2) restore the dignity of work.
If education is the gateway to success in our market-dominated society, then you would hope that the student bodies of the best colleges in the country were representative of the population at large. They are not. As Sandel notes:
“More than 70 percent of those who attend the hundred or so most competitive colleges in the United States come from the top quarter of the income scale; only 3 percent come from the bottom quarter.”
Additionally, if you come from a rich family (top 1 percent), you are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League school than if you come from a poor family (bottom 20 percent). Studies have also shown that even for the kids from poor families that are admitted to the most selective colleges, very few are able to move to higher income brackets.
Sandel’s solution to expand the diversity in the top US colleges includes eliminating the SAT as a requirement for admissions, as high SAT scores more closely correlate with family wealth than with the ability to excel in college. He also suggests instituting a lottery for admissions, where applicants that are deemed less likely to succeed based on grades and application materials are first eliminated. Then, the remainder are entered into a lottery and randomly chosen, so as not to prioritize the children of alumni, donors, or other arbitrary connections.
Moving on to restoring the dignity of work, Sandel shows how the market cannot be trusted to answer the question as to which jobs have the highest social value. As Sandel wrote:
“Only an ardent libertarian would insist that the wealthy casino magnate’s contribution to society is a thousand times more valuable than that of a pediatrician.”
We are not simply consumers, concerned only with the total amount of material goods and services (measured in GDP) that we can consume. What matters more to people is being a valued contributor to society, engaging in work that is considered important and respected. What has happened in the meritocratic US is that the market has overemphasized certain positions—particularly in finance—that are not necessarily involved in the production of tangible products and services, while looking down on those jobs that are actually tangibly beneficial (such as plumbing or sanitation work). And because the market overvalues elite, credentialed positions, society’s elites come to look down on those without college degrees working in the trades.
But there is dignity in all work, as everyone plays their part in the contribution to the common good. As martin Luther King Jr. said:
“One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant.”
To re-emphasize the value and dignity of work—and to de-emphasize the inflated value assigned by the market to elite positions in finance and other credentialed positions—Sandel suggests shifting the tax burden away from work and onto consumption and financial speculation. The way to do this is to lower or eliminate payroll taxes altogether and to raise revenue instead by taxing consumption, wealth, and financial transactions, including high-frequency trading, which contributes little to the real economy (in fact, high-frequency financial trading in most cases extracts money from the real economy to enrich investors who then pass their wealth on to their children).
Sandel’s suggestions make a lot of sense; by making education less meritocratic, restoring the dignity of work, shifting the tax burden away from workers, reducing inequality, and restoring social esteem among all workers, the underlying source of the politics of resentment (which is largely to blame for the election of Donald Trump) is eliminated.
I will say I’m surprised that Sandel does not consider political fixes such as sortition, or the random assignment of citizens to political office. Sandel shows how our elected representatives are more credential than ever (95 percent have a college degree) but less representative of the population (only one-third of US adults have a college degree). Further, there is little evidence that having these credentials leads to greater moral character, civic virtue, or ability to govern. Based on this, you would think that creating a system of governance where our elected representatives do not disproportionately represent the meritocratic elite would be more of a priority for Sandel to explore.
Nevertheless, this is a critically important work that questions the assumption most of us have that society should simply strive to become a perfect meritocracy. We should understand that the constant striving and competition and reliance on the market to value social activity has resulted in extreme inequality and a politics of resentment. We must understand that those that rise to the top of society do so through several contingencies that should foster feelings of humility and gratitude, not hubris, and that the path to a better society includes valuing the dignity of all work and resisting our tendency to allow the market to determine the economic and social value of our jobs.
December 8, 2020
Sandel wants to restore the dignity of work by universal basic income (he does not call it that but that is what it is), because he thinks Trump got elected by white, racist males with no college degrees left behind by globalization. Thus, every worker (in Sandels imagination: every envious, angry non-college graduate) should have a part of their salary paid directly by the state. Moreover, he wants to make the college admissions process of Harvard into a lottery, so it is random above a certain level who gets in. Moreover, he wants the US to spend more on career and technical education like Denmark. We should tax finance award more dignity to nurses and plumbers – I believe he would call it distributional justice. Sandel thinks libraries and taxing sugar are great.
Problem is that these views are fine, but on the way to them he goes full communist in that he wants the market to function based on our common moral assessment of a given activity: Down with finance and up with nurses. That is just nonsense.
Another problem: His criticism of the meritocracy can be launched at every known social system built by humans: There will always be someone outside and someone inside a system. Sandels believes it is a problem worth changing the society for that there are winners behaving badly - that is his criticism of the tyranny of meritocracy. Sandel is a bit like the mothers who agree that the boys playing soccer should all have a prize for participation and no prize for scoring or winning.
All for the sake of the feeling of the workers. The workers must feel self esteem again. So, Sandel wants to radically change the market, because of someone’s feelings. Yes, true story.. using feelings as a compass for fundamental social change. Wauw - slow clapping here.
In the end Sandel is looking to restore a sense of the common good, but he is unwilling to talk of Christianity. Is all very much written as vague suggestions. Like a lot of social policy from the socialists it floats in mid air.
Also, quite funny to see him completely misrepresent the Puritans and the Calvinists. Sandel says that they believe that grace only comes from God and that you can’t improve your standing in heaven by doing things on earth. And then he said that this leads the Puritans and Calvinists to work really hard to prove they are blessed by God nonetheless. Oh, and not only do they work hard they also look down on other people, if they are not as successful - all because of their belief that in Gods eyes no one can improve their place. Nonsense.
And if the problem is that successful people look down on people on lower rungs of society is the solution not more Christianity and the virtues inherent in Christianity? He himself quotes Pope John Paul II later in the book, because the pope in an Encyclical Letter from 1981 wrote of the dignity of work. He also cites a letter saying the same by some Catholic Bishops. Why not just say: Back to Christianity, cuz it turns out we humans need a little more than our own sinful passions and reason for this thing called democracy to work for everyone?
The book is one big "I do not like Trump" and now I am going to invent some way to say that in an intellectual way. This becomes more ridiculous as you figure out that Trump has exactly done for the American worker what Sandel wants. Sandel criticizes the overrepresentation of Ivy League educated politicians, but is unable to see Trump is precisely not a part of that establishment with his uncouth way of speaking and living.
This guy is lying by gaslighting. It is fine you are a socialist, but please just say it out loud. That is were the conversation can begin. Sandel instead deploys the effective tactic of discrediting his opponent, so no rreal debate is possible. That is annoying and manipulative.
I cannot believe he is a tenured professor at Harvard. He spends so much time and energy finding out that the Christian teachings are and were correct: Humility and a deep understanding of grace (what you have is not your making 100 %) and an openness to all humans (anybody is welcome in the church) is quite a good idea. And he does not want to say it.
And btw. it turned out the Democrats in 2020 lost a lot of seats and local elections due to the ridiculous culture war of the democrats (intersectionality, white men are racists, women are angels, boys are women etc.).
White, racist men did not elect Donald Trump. The democrats were and are awful. Trump even lost a percentage with the white males in 2020 by the way and gained some with blacks and latinos.
I also love he attributes Brexit to people being against immigration. No sir, we just do not like muslims who hate us. How blind and lying by omission can you possible operate. This guy sets a new standard.
Sandel also wants citizens to start discussing what they owe each other to underline common dependency. Good luck with that one in the muslim communities. Mr. Sandel, please call me when you find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and some unicorns. I am sure you can do it.
Ill-informed and manipulative. And he stole his idea from Axel Honneth who I read years ago. Difference is that Honneth is basing his idea on Hegel. To make the same point Sandel has to tear down the market. Sandel writes himself that Hegel is difficult to read. So a Harvard professor takes the intellectually long and dishonest road and destroys everything along with him instead of the logically and better, but harder short one to make the same point, because he does not understand Hegel: Go with Hegel and then you are there. You do not have to kill capitalism to make that point. Hi, Harvard hire me instead if that is the standard.
What a clown. He surely succeeded in one purpose: To denigrate the Harvard brand.
Please read “A Conflict of Visions” by Sowell instead. Or even better, "Hillbilly Elegy", by J.D. Vance: As Sandel himself describes, the so-called white racists are also tired of the line-cutters who get special treatment. And there is room for improvement in terms of self-betterment among whites. However, Sandel wants society to not only give you stuff, he also believes everyone owe it to everyone to make sure everyone FEELS good. He is basically a weirdo if you strip away his credentials.
The worst part is that he does not actually go out and say what he proposes. He starts by shaming everyone who might disagree. He himself advocates more open debate and then he rhetorically deploys a preemptive strike.
My favourite stupid part of the book is his characterization of "striving" as something that only causes stress for the parents and children involved in the admissions process. This guy does not seem to understand that everyone benefits from hard work and that learning something and using it in a market creates this great civilization. Should Ford have said: "Oh no, I am not gonna build that car, cuz I am really stressed out right now and I think I just like need to chillax for a couple of days." I cannot believe the decadence of this dude.
Rant over.
Problem is that these views are fine, but on the way to them he goes full communist in that he wants the market to function based on our common moral assessment of a given activity: Down with finance and up with nurses. That is just nonsense.
Another problem: His criticism of the meritocracy can be launched at every known social system built by humans: There will always be someone outside and someone inside a system. Sandels believes it is a problem worth changing the society for that there are winners behaving badly - that is his criticism of the tyranny of meritocracy. Sandel is a bit like the mothers who agree that the boys playing soccer should all have a prize for participation and no prize for scoring or winning.
All for the sake of the feeling of the workers. The workers must feel self esteem again. So, Sandel wants to radically change the market, because of someone’s feelings. Yes, true story.. using feelings as a compass for fundamental social change. Wauw - slow clapping here.
In the end Sandel is looking to restore a sense of the common good, but he is unwilling to talk of Christianity. Is all very much written as vague suggestions. Like a lot of social policy from the socialists it floats in mid air.
Also, quite funny to see him completely misrepresent the Puritans and the Calvinists. Sandel says that they believe that grace only comes from God and that you can’t improve your standing in heaven by doing things on earth. And then he said that this leads the Puritans and Calvinists to work really hard to prove they are blessed by God nonetheless. Oh, and not only do they work hard they also look down on other people, if they are not as successful - all because of their belief that in Gods eyes no one can improve their place. Nonsense.
And if the problem is that successful people look down on people on lower rungs of society is the solution not more Christianity and the virtues inherent in Christianity? He himself quotes Pope John Paul II later in the book, because the pope in an Encyclical Letter from 1981 wrote of the dignity of work. He also cites a letter saying the same by some Catholic Bishops. Why not just say: Back to Christianity, cuz it turns out we humans need a little more than our own sinful passions and reason for this thing called democracy to work for everyone?
The book is one big "I do not like Trump" and now I am going to invent some way to say that in an intellectual way. This becomes more ridiculous as you figure out that Trump has exactly done for the American worker what Sandel wants. Sandel criticizes the overrepresentation of Ivy League educated politicians, but is unable to see Trump is precisely not a part of that establishment with his uncouth way of speaking and living.
This guy is lying by gaslighting. It is fine you are a socialist, but please just say it out loud. That is were the conversation can begin. Sandel instead deploys the effective tactic of discrediting his opponent, so no rreal debate is possible. That is annoying and manipulative.
I cannot believe he is a tenured professor at Harvard. He spends so much time and energy finding out that the Christian teachings are and were correct: Humility and a deep understanding of grace (what you have is not your making 100 %) and an openness to all humans (anybody is welcome in the church) is quite a good idea. And he does not want to say it.
And btw. it turned out the Democrats in 2020 lost a lot of seats and local elections due to the ridiculous culture war of the democrats (intersectionality, white men are racists, women are angels, boys are women etc.).
White, racist men did not elect Donald Trump. The democrats were and are awful. Trump even lost a percentage with the white males in 2020 by the way and gained some with blacks and latinos.
I also love he attributes Brexit to people being against immigration. No sir, we just do not like muslims who hate us. How blind and lying by omission can you possible operate. This guy sets a new standard.
Sandel also wants citizens to start discussing what they owe each other to underline common dependency. Good luck with that one in the muslim communities. Mr. Sandel, please call me when you find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and some unicorns. I am sure you can do it.
Ill-informed and manipulative. And he stole his idea from Axel Honneth who I read years ago. Difference is that Honneth is basing his idea on Hegel. To make the same point Sandel has to tear down the market. Sandel writes himself that Hegel is difficult to read. So a Harvard professor takes the intellectually long and dishonest road and destroys everything along with him instead of the logically and better, but harder short one to make the same point, because he does not understand Hegel: Go with Hegel and then you are there. You do not have to kill capitalism to make that point. Hi, Harvard hire me instead if that is the standard.
What a clown. He surely succeeded in one purpose: To denigrate the Harvard brand.
Please read “A Conflict of Visions” by Sowell instead. Or even better, "Hillbilly Elegy", by J.D. Vance: As Sandel himself describes, the so-called white racists are also tired of the line-cutters who get special treatment. And there is room for improvement in terms of self-betterment among whites. However, Sandel wants society to not only give you stuff, he also believes everyone owe it to everyone to make sure everyone FEELS good. He is basically a weirdo if you strip away his credentials.
The worst part is that he does not actually go out and say what he proposes. He starts by shaming everyone who might disagree. He himself advocates more open debate and then he rhetorically deploys a preemptive strike.
My favourite stupid part of the book is his characterization of "striving" as something that only causes stress for the parents and children involved in the admissions process. This guy does not seem to understand that everyone benefits from hard work and that learning something and using it in a market creates this great civilization. Should Ford have said: "Oh no, I am not gonna build that car, cuz I am really stressed out right now and I think I just like need to chillax for a couple of days." I cannot believe the decadence of this dude.
Rant over.
February 18, 2024
There is so much not to like in this book that I feel like I need to write a well organized essay about it at some point rather than these quick slapdash notes. But for now all I have are these quick slapdash notes.
That is not to say the entire book is wrong, much of it is right and important--but none of what is right and important is particularly novel, it is in fact common fare on the oped pages of major publications, like inequality has risen, opportunity is not as high as many think, elite colleges do not live up to their stated meritocratic ideals and the increase in non-employment is a problem. At one point it had a novel framing of a familiar issue that I liked--which is the need to focus not just on distributive justice but also on contributive justice, particularly how to do justice to people's contributions. To some degree this was saying work should be in the utility function as a positive--and that we should reshape social attitudes so we think that way about our own work and others work.
But most of the book reads like the sophmoric ranting of a random person on Twitter going on about neoliberalism and globalization without seriously engaging with what either of them actually proposed or their consequences. You would think that Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's only solution to our economic problems was to hector people into going to college without acknowledging they had much, much more to their agenda than that--including expanding wage subsidies (i.e., the EITC), an idea Sandel mistakenly claims is heterodox and attributes to Oren Cass. (To be clear, Cass has a bigger proposal--but it is reminiscent of Ned Phelps not to mention one that I developed with Phill Swagel, two people Sandel would consider "neoliberal").
Sandel goes on about the financialization of the economy which wastes resources and creates rents, crediting these ideas to heterodox thinkers when he could just have easily have cited leading mainstream economists publishing in leading journals like Jeremy Stein and Thomas Philippon. But then Sandel throws in legitimate issues (e.g., the wasted resources for high-speed trading) with ones where is probably wrong (e.g., objecting to Credit Default Swaps because people do not buy the actual company) and certainly wrong (e.g., objecting to stock buybacks). And, like most of the issues he identifies, he does not have a real solution (he proposes a financial transactions tax which would address a small subset of the issues he raises).
Sandel is completely obsessed with the very elite universities which are a much smaller part of the overall story of what he claims to care about. And he does not address the awkward fact that even if Harvard eliminated legacies, athletics and extracurriculars a pure merit-based admissions would still admit about 10% of students from the top 1%. At the very least this says that a lot of the solution to the issues he is worried about has to happen before students are 17 and apply to college, like preschool, school reform, and then the awkwardness of differential parental inputs and genes. (By the say, like so much else in the book, his discussion of SATs as exacerbating inequalities of opportunity does not seriously engage much of the research that finds the opposite).
Sandel over claims on the proposition that the elevation of a meritocracy means that people are blamed more for their failings today than they were in the past. He argues, "The providentialist notion that people get what they deserve reverberates in contemporary public discourse." He then cites as an example Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on America's sins like abortion, feminism and LGBT. But Falwell was widely reviled for that statement, if anything the reaction to it is the opposite of what Sandel is claiming.
Other anecdotes he offers (and yes, the evidence is almost all anecdotes), go directly against his thesis. He talks about when he was in high school (presumably the late 1960s) and how they sat people in his math class in order of their grades, with a resorting of the seating periodically after new tests. It is impossible to imagine that happening today in the "everyone gets a trophy" world.
Sandel is very negative on just about every consequentialist and person focused on distributive justice (e.g., Rawls is blamed for legitimating wealth and letting the wealthy feel good about themselves for creating jobs and reducing poverty). But then everything comes back to money for him. He talks a lot about "esteem" and "dignity" but for him it really does seem to come down to money. Which is fine, but then admit that distributive justice is an important part of the answer. But also the "common good" and shared project can't just be people discussing philosophy with each other but bonding over sports, Taylor Swift, a shared identity as Americans, and many other aspects of life that bring meaning, purpose, dignity and connection that are outside the economic sphere.
But perhaps what bothered me most was that the book jumbles up positive and normative claims with no clear delineation between them. I could not tell if he had a different moral philosophy than the people he criticizes (in many cases straw mans). Or a different reading of the data. Much of the argument is about Trump being elected means we need to change the way we talk about various issues. If Trump had lost would we have not needed to change? He makes sweeping (and wrong) statements about wages falling in inflation-adjusted terms over fifty years and (possibly wrong) statements like after-tax inequality continuing to rise. If those facts were the opposite would that change his philosophy? I wish I knew because there are some valid and interesting philosophical ideas but they are messily mixed together with a lot more that does not seriously engage with economics, economic policy, or the often messy and subtle facts about the world.
That is not to say the entire book is wrong, much of it is right and important--but none of what is right and important is particularly novel, it is in fact common fare on the oped pages of major publications, like inequality has risen, opportunity is not as high as many think, elite colleges do not live up to their stated meritocratic ideals and the increase in non-employment is a problem. At one point it had a novel framing of a familiar issue that I liked--which is the need to focus not just on distributive justice but also on contributive justice, particularly how to do justice to people's contributions. To some degree this was saying work should be in the utility function as a positive--and that we should reshape social attitudes so we think that way about our own work and others work.
But most of the book reads like the sophmoric ranting of a random person on Twitter going on about neoliberalism and globalization without seriously engaging with what either of them actually proposed or their consequences. You would think that Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's only solution to our economic problems was to hector people into going to college without acknowledging they had much, much more to their agenda than that--including expanding wage subsidies (i.e., the EITC), an idea Sandel mistakenly claims is heterodox and attributes to Oren Cass. (To be clear, Cass has a bigger proposal--but it is reminiscent of Ned Phelps not to mention one that I developed with Phill Swagel, two people Sandel would consider "neoliberal").
Sandel goes on about the financialization of the economy which wastes resources and creates rents, crediting these ideas to heterodox thinkers when he could just have easily have cited leading mainstream economists publishing in leading journals like Jeremy Stein and Thomas Philippon. But then Sandel throws in legitimate issues (e.g., the wasted resources for high-speed trading) with ones where is probably wrong (e.g., objecting to Credit Default Swaps because people do not buy the actual company) and certainly wrong (e.g., objecting to stock buybacks). And, like most of the issues he identifies, he does not have a real solution (he proposes a financial transactions tax which would address a small subset of the issues he raises).
Sandel is completely obsessed with the very elite universities which are a much smaller part of the overall story of what he claims to care about. And he does not address the awkward fact that even if Harvard eliminated legacies, athletics and extracurriculars a pure merit-based admissions would still admit about 10% of students from the top 1%. At the very least this says that a lot of the solution to the issues he is worried about has to happen before students are 17 and apply to college, like preschool, school reform, and then the awkwardness of differential parental inputs and genes. (By the say, like so much else in the book, his discussion of SATs as exacerbating inequalities of opportunity does not seriously engage much of the research that finds the opposite).
Sandel over claims on the proposition that the elevation of a meritocracy means that people are blamed more for their failings today than they were in the past. He argues, "The providentialist notion that people get what they deserve reverberates in contemporary public discourse." He then cites as an example Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on America's sins like abortion, feminism and LGBT. But Falwell was widely reviled for that statement, if anything the reaction to it is the opposite of what Sandel is claiming.
Other anecdotes he offers (and yes, the evidence is almost all anecdotes), go directly against his thesis. He talks about when he was in high school (presumably the late 1960s) and how they sat people in his math class in order of their grades, with a resorting of the seating periodically after new tests. It is impossible to imagine that happening today in the "everyone gets a trophy" world.
Sandel is very negative on just about every consequentialist and person focused on distributive justice (e.g., Rawls is blamed for legitimating wealth and letting the wealthy feel good about themselves for creating jobs and reducing poverty). But then everything comes back to money for him. He talks a lot about "esteem" and "dignity" but for him it really does seem to come down to money. Which is fine, but then admit that distributive justice is an important part of the answer. But also the "common good" and shared project can't just be people discussing philosophy with each other but bonding over sports, Taylor Swift, a shared identity as Americans, and many other aspects of life that bring meaning, purpose, dignity and connection that are outside the economic sphere.
But perhaps what bothered me most was that the book jumbles up positive and normative claims with no clear delineation between them. I could not tell if he had a different moral philosophy than the people he criticizes (in many cases straw mans). Or a different reading of the data. Much of the argument is about Trump being elected means we need to change the way we talk about various issues. If Trump had lost would we have not needed to change? He makes sweeping (and wrong) statements about wages falling in inflation-adjusted terms over fifty years and (possibly wrong) statements like after-tax inequality continuing to rise. If those facts were the opposite would that change his philosophy? I wish I knew because there are some valid and interesting philosophical ideas but they are messily mixed together with a lot more that does not seriously engage with economics, economic policy, or the often messy and subtle facts about the world.
November 3, 2020
A philosophical goldmine. This is the book I'm going to be giving to all my cerebral friends for Christmas this year. Political elites all over America NEED to understand this book.
I grew up poor. Took one semester of college but didn't finish, in large part because I was already working as a self-taught computer programmer. It was the late 90s when any breathing programmer was richly rewarded by the dot com boom. My career in technology turned out to be very economically rewarding, better than if I had taken 4 years to finish college. Through it all, I have always acknowledged this truth: luck and other factors influenced my successes at least as much as my hard work and self-study. Many other similarly gifted programmers live in my part of the world, and the magic of having worked for a startup unicorn didn't happen to them. I was convicted by something Taleb wrote in "Fooled by Randomness" about a janitor who won the lottery, but if you had re-rolled the dice of his life a million more times, he would not have made a lot of money in those other lives, comparing it to a professional like a dentist whose financial life would turn out decently in most of the million alternate possible lifetimes. In some ways, I was the janitor who won the lottery.
In a society that increasingly believes we are living in a meritocracy, people come to believe that Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates level riches are something a person morally deserves because of free markets, as well as the result of their cultivated talents, hard work, intelligence, etc. The dark side of this belief: if the ultra successful merited their rewards, then we are led to believe that those who do not win the race also morally deserve their failure. We imagine they failed because it was their fault, so they deserve their lot in life too. Over time, these attitudes evolve a group of elites whose kids start the 100M race of life on the 90M line, competing against other children who start on the actual starting line. It is obvious who will win such a race. Worse yet, the winners are enabled to think it was all their hard work that brought their successes, often ignoring the role of luck and circumstance, as well as their special talents and gifts bestowed on them by factors outside their control -- for example, I can make no special moral claim to have chosen to be born natural abilities that led me to success as a computer programmer. Then also there is the fact that I was born into a time and place which valued those gifts. Nerdy guys born into the 1800s were not similarly advantaged, and I had no control over which timeline I was born into. Successful people who think they did it all by themselves are displaying "Meritocratic Hubris".
Skip forward to my favorite chapter, which described the lives of many Americans who, like me, didn't finish college and worked in what are sometimes called "unskilled" careers. They were working in factories and other industries which for decades have been increasingly outsourced to cheaper labor markets. Some of their jobs have been lost to cheaper labor provided by undocumented economic immigrants from Latin America. I absolutely understand the motivation of migrants to escape the poverty of a place like Guatemala, having lived there for two years in the middle 90s. But until this book, I had not felt full empathy for the bleak situation of my many
fellow citizens here in America. I had been telling myself the also-true narrative that migrants come here often for jobs in farm work that most US citizens won't do, and that many of these migrants are shamefully exploited as a permanent underclass of cheap labor, constantly in fear of being deported, under Trump more than ever before. But there is another underdog that also needs my support and respect: these US citizens who were left behind by a globalizing economy. Instead of showing true concern and care, our political elites are guilty of treating these people condescendingly. Many white males without college degrees have simply stopped trying to find the employment that they've lost. Imagine being told by condescending social elites that the solution is to just learn new life skills, and "The more you learn, the more you can earn." Previous to 2016, the states that went for Trump had been suffering increasing rates of "deaths by despair" -- alcoholism, drugs, suicide.
I've always believed that all honest work is dignified, and I was particularly touched by a story of Martin Luther King Jr speaking to a group of sanitation workers (garbage men) and telling them that their work is as valuable to society as that of doctors, because without the work they do we would all be living in filth and disease. American society needs to do some thinking about whether the only goal of a free market should be money and ever increasing profits at the expense of wellbeing. We need to come back to a vision of work that offers dignity and respect for the contributions made by all members of our societies.
I really hope some of the elites pick up this book and are taught the empathy that I gained from it. We need to get the conversation moving forward, bring all participants to the table and perhaps after discarding our meritocratic hubris we can rediscover our shared humanity in the process.
I grew up poor. Took one semester of college but didn't finish, in large part because I was already working as a self-taught computer programmer. It was the late 90s when any breathing programmer was richly rewarded by the dot com boom. My career in technology turned out to be very economically rewarding, better than if I had taken 4 years to finish college. Through it all, I have always acknowledged this truth: luck and other factors influenced my successes at least as much as my hard work and self-study. Many other similarly gifted programmers live in my part of the world, and the magic of having worked for a startup unicorn didn't happen to them. I was convicted by something Taleb wrote in "Fooled by Randomness" about a janitor who won the lottery, but if you had re-rolled the dice of his life a million more times, he would not have made a lot of money in those other lives, comparing it to a professional like a dentist whose financial life would turn out decently in most of the million alternate possible lifetimes. In some ways, I was the janitor who won the lottery.
In a society that increasingly believes we are living in a meritocracy, people come to believe that Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates level riches are something a person morally deserves because of free markets, as well as the result of their cultivated talents, hard work, intelligence, etc. The dark side of this belief: if the ultra successful merited their rewards, then we are led to believe that those who do not win the race also morally deserve their failure. We imagine they failed because it was their fault, so they deserve their lot in life too. Over time, these attitudes evolve a group of elites whose kids start the 100M race of life on the 90M line, competing against other children who start on the actual starting line. It is obvious who will win such a race. Worse yet, the winners are enabled to think it was all their hard work that brought their successes, often ignoring the role of luck and circumstance, as well as their special talents and gifts bestowed on them by factors outside their control -- for example, I can make no special moral claim to have chosen to be born natural abilities that led me to success as a computer programmer. Then also there is the fact that I was born into a time and place which valued those gifts. Nerdy guys born into the 1800s were not similarly advantaged, and I had no control over which timeline I was born into. Successful people who think they did it all by themselves are displaying "Meritocratic Hubris".
Skip forward to my favorite chapter, which described the lives of many Americans who, like me, didn't finish college and worked in what are sometimes called "unskilled" careers. They were working in factories and other industries which for decades have been increasingly outsourced to cheaper labor markets. Some of their jobs have been lost to cheaper labor provided by undocumented economic immigrants from Latin America. I absolutely understand the motivation of migrants to escape the poverty of a place like Guatemala, having lived there for two years in the middle 90s. But until this book, I had not felt full empathy for the bleak situation of my many
fellow citizens here in America. I had been telling myself the also-true narrative that migrants come here often for jobs in farm work that most US citizens won't do, and that many of these migrants are shamefully exploited as a permanent underclass of cheap labor, constantly in fear of being deported, under Trump more than ever before. But there is another underdog that also needs my support and respect: these US citizens who were left behind by a globalizing economy. Instead of showing true concern and care, our political elites are guilty of treating these people condescendingly. Many white males without college degrees have simply stopped trying to find the employment that they've lost. Imagine being told by condescending social elites that the solution is to just learn new life skills, and "The more you learn, the more you can earn." Previous to 2016, the states that went for Trump had been suffering increasing rates of "deaths by despair" -- alcoholism, drugs, suicide.
I've always believed that all honest work is dignified, and I was particularly touched by a story of Martin Luther King Jr speaking to a group of sanitation workers (garbage men) and telling them that their work is as valuable to society as that of doctors, because without the work they do we would all be living in filth and disease. American society needs to do some thinking about whether the only goal of a free market should be money and ever increasing profits at the expense of wellbeing. We need to come back to a vision of work that offers dignity and respect for the contributions made by all members of our societies.
I really hope some of the elites pick up this book and are taught the empathy that I gained from it. We need to get the conversation moving forward, bring all participants to the table and perhaps after discarding our meritocratic hubris we can rediscover our shared humanity in the process.
January 17, 2022
i ran into a random stanford alum in nyc yesterday. after going over our graduation years (she was '16, i white lied as a '21), she asked what i was reading. i responded with this book and she laughed: "yeah, that sounds right."
in the tyranny of merit, sandel poses that america spends all this energy trying to perfect our educational meritocracy (affirmative action, standardized testing, etc) without ever questioning its foundational assumptions — and their consequences for our civic and political fabric.
i loved the first half on the intellectual history of the meritocratic ideal and the evolution of higher ed as american symbol. this is where sandel's background as an undergrad philosophy professor shines: there are fascinating ties to protestantism and predestination, hayekian economics and rawlsian justice, eugenics and anti-semitism in college admissions.
the last half of the book discusses ways to define status outside of merit. sandel brings up the notion of "contributive justice," which for him, mostly translates into rewarding the act of work itself rather than the credential attached to it. yet in spanning policy areas from university admissions to progressive tax codes, i found the recommendations too shallow and scattered to be able to engage with the depth of the problems he identifies.
you might finish this book feeling pretty cynical: he suggests it's all but impossible to draw lines around 'merit' without creating a status hierarchy. it doesn't matter how fair the process is or how deserving the winners are — the communities you create are tainted by the fact of the gate itself, that the elite group is defined primarily by their superiority over those outside the lines.
meritocracy's ideals have been imprinted onto me familially and culturally; i've spent my whole life feeling disgusted by the endless hoop-jumping, yet continuing to participate again and again. statistically, i'm a relative "winner" in the meritocratic game, yet emotionally, i resonated with sandel's emphasis on the shame, humiliation, and indignity that meritocracy seeds.
but i don't know if i'll be able to do much different after reading this: sure, merit might be a social construct, but like all the other social constructs, it's all too real.
in the tyranny of merit, sandel poses that america spends all this energy trying to perfect our educational meritocracy (affirmative action, standardized testing, etc) without ever questioning its foundational assumptions — and their consequences for our civic and political fabric.
i loved the first half on the intellectual history of the meritocratic ideal and the evolution of higher ed as american symbol. this is where sandel's background as an undergrad philosophy professor shines: there are fascinating ties to protestantism and predestination, hayekian economics and rawlsian justice, eugenics and anti-semitism in college admissions.
the last half of the book discusses ways to define status outside of merit. sandel brings up the notion of "contributive justice," which for him, mostly translates into rewarding the act of work itself rather than the credential attached to it. yet in spanning policy areas from university admissions to progressive tax codes, i found the recommendations too shallow and scattered to be able to engage with the depth of the problems he identifies.
you might finish this book feeling pretty cynical: he suggests it's all but impossible to draw lines around 'merit' without creating a status hierarchy. it doesn't matter how fair the process is or how deserving the winners are — the communities you create are tainted by the fact of the gate itself, that the elite group is defined primarily by their superiority over those outside the lines.
meritocracy's ideals have been imprinted onto me familially and culturally; i've spent my whole life feeling disgusted by the endless hoop-jumping, yet continuing to participate again and again. statistically, i'm a relative "winner" in the meritocratic game, yet emotionally, i resonated with sandel's emphasis on the shame, humiliation, and indignity that meritocracy seeds.
but i don't know if i'll be able to do much different after reading this: sure, merit might be a social construct, but like all the other social constructs, it's all too real.
October 1, 2020
I seriously hated this book for reasons too numerous to recount. Very disappointed. At a very basic level, if you are going to write a book where you continually evoke “the elite” and “merit” — defining the terms would be an excellent start. The lack of care with definitions and repeated invocations of unproven and unsupported premises made this book incredibly problematic for me.
October 19, 2020
Every single book authored by Michael Sandel has transformed the way I perceive the moral and political world around me and this book was no exception. To me, this book was the best analysis of the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the U.S., the Brexit in the UK, and the populist movement around the world. Michael Sandel brings to light the failure of the elites (like those that live in my liberal bubbles) to see their role in creating the populist response in the last decade.
(Hint: If you're a well-educated Democrat living in a metropolitan area in the U.S. and you are in the business of blocking your Trump supporter friends on Facebook, this book is your wake-up call! Read this book and listen more carefully to your friends!).
Sandel argues that in the last two decades, the mainstream parties have failed in carrying the globalization project in two ways:
1) the meritocratic way of defining winners and losers, which has brought hubris to the winners, and humiliation to the losers.
2) the technocratic way of defining the public good, which has lead to the formation of governments that are not representative of their people.
Obtaining an education and having a college degree have been touted by meritocrats such as Obama, Clintons, Tony Blair, and others as the single determinant of social mobility. Sandel explains that the single-minded “education solution" to inequality has a side effect: eroding the social esteem of those that have not gone to college. After all, most Americans (2 out of 3 adults) do not have college degrees and by telling such workers that their inadequate education is their own doing, meritocrats have made success and failure a moral matter.
This one goes down as one of the best books that I read in 2020.
(Hint: If you're a well-educated Democrat living in a metropolitan area in the U.S. and you are in the business of blocking your Trump supporter friends on Facebook, this book is your wake-up call! Read this book and listen more carefully to your friends!).
Sandel argues that in the last two decades, the mainstream parties have failed in carrying the globalization project in two ways:
1) the meritocratic way of defining winners and losers, which has brought hubris to the winners, and humiliation to the losers.
2) the technocratic way of defining the public good, which has lead to the formation of governments that are not representative of their people.
Obtaining an education and having a college degree have been touted by meritocrats such as Obama, Clintons, Tony Blair, and others as the single determinant of social mobility. Sandel explains that the single-minded “education solution" to inequality has a side effect: eroding the social esteem of those that have not gone to college. After all, most Americans (2 out of 3 adults) do not have college degrees and by telling such workers that their inadequate education is their own doing, meritocrats have made success and failure a moral matter.
This one goes down as one of the best books that I read in 2020.
February 8, 2024
خب کتاب در واقع درباره دیکتاتوری نخبه هاست، بله با وجود این که نخبه ها مسئولیت های اصلی یک حکومت رو در دست بگیرند، باز ممکنه دچار دیکتاتوری بشیم. نویسنده به نقد اصول حاکم بر جوامع لیبرال - دموکراتِ غربی پرداخته.
متفکری برجسته و اثرگذار که عمدهی اندیشههایش حول سه محور عدالت، آزادی و اخلاق میگردند. شهرت مایکل سندل، بیش از همه، مرهون نگارش کتابی درخشان با عنوان «عدالت: چه باید کرد» است. اثری که پس از انتشار اولیه در سال 2008 موجی از تحسینها و البته، انتقادات را به سوی شخص نویسنده روانه ساخت. سندل در کتاب مذکور موضوع حساس عدالت اجتماعی را مورد تأمل قرار داده بود و در این مسیر، آرای برخی از نامدارترین فیلسوفان غربی، از جمله ارسطو، کانت و جان رالز، را به اتهام عدالتستیزی زیر سوال برده بود.
مایکل سندل در کتاب استبداد شایستگی از طریق به پرسش گرفتن «اصل شایستگی»، آرای بسیاری از فیلسوفانِ متعلق به سنت لیبرال، از جمله لودویگ فون میزس و فریدریش آوگوست فون هایک، را آماج نقدی گزنده قرار داده است. اصل شایستگی، آنگونه که سندل صورتبندی کرده و توضیح میدهد، مبتنی بر این فرض است که در یک جامعهی ایدهآل، افراد گوناگون به اندازهی لیاقت و شایستگی خویش از زندگی خوب و مرفه بهره خواهند برد. فیلسوفانی که به حقانیت اصل شایستگی معتقدند، بر این باورند که دولتها باید تا آنجا که ممکن است از دخالت خود در عرصههای فرهنگی، اجتماعی و خصوصاً اقتصادی بکاهند و ادارهی امور را به مکانیسمِ فعالِ بازار آزاد واگذار کنند. در غیر این صورت، رؤیای «بیشترین رفاه ممکن برای بیشترین شمار ممکن» هرگز به تحقق نخواهد رسید. سندل در کتاب پیش رو، از مجرای بررسی وضعیت جوامعی که بر مبنای اصل شایستگی اداره میشوند، به نقد این اصل پرداخته و در عوض، از لزوم برقراری «اصل عدالت و مساوات» به جای اصل شایستگی، دفاع نموده است.
متفکری برجسته و اثرگذار که عمدهی اندیشههایش حول سه محور عدالت، آزادی و اخلاق میگردند. شهرت مایکل سندل، بیش از همه، مرهون نگارش کتابی درخشان با عنوان «عدالت: چه باید کرد» است. اثری که پس از انتشار اولیه در سال 2008 موجی از تحسینها و البته، انتقادات را به سوی شخص نویسنده روانه ساخت. سندل در کتاب مذکور موضوع حساس عدالت اجتماعی را مورد تأمل قرار داده بود و در این مسیر، آرای برخی از نامدارترین فیلسوفان غربی، از جمله ارسطو، کانت و جان رالز، را به اتهام عدالتستیزی زیر سوال برده بود.
مایکل سندل در کتاب استبداد شایستگی از طریق به پرسش گرفتن «اصل شایستگی»، آرای بسیاری از فیلسوفانِ متعلق به سنت لیبرال، از جمله لودویگ فون میزس و فریدریش آوگوست فون هایک، را آماج نقدی گزنده قرار داده است. اصل شایستگی، آنگونه که سندل صورتبندی کرده و توضیح میدهد، مبتنی بر این فرض است که در یک جامعهی ایدهآل، افراد گوناگون به اندازهی لیاقت و شایستگی خویش از زندگی خوب و مرفه بهره خواهند برد. فیلسوفانی که به حقانیت اصل شایستگی معتقدند، بر این باورند که دولتها باید تا آنجا که ممکن است از دخالت خود در عرصههای فرهنگی، اجتماعی و خصوصاً اقتصادی بکاهند و ادارهی امور را به مکانیسمِ فعالِ بازار آزاد واگذار کنند. در غیر این صورت، رؤیای «بیشترین رفاه ممکن برای بیشترین شمار ممکن» هرگز به تحقق نخواهد رسید. سندل در کتاب پیش رو، از مجرای بررسی وضعیت جوامعی که بر مبنای اصل شایستگی اداره میشوند، به نقد این اصل پرداخته و در عوض، از لزوم برقراری «اصل عدالت و مساوات» به جای اصل شایستگی، دفاع نموده است.
August 3, 2023
Really interesting philosophy book. Might have helped explain to me the nature of why people are compelled to vote the way they do. Enlightening. Marinating...
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. It was narrated by the author. Annoying until I sped it up to 1.5x, then it was just right.
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. It was narrated by the author. Annoying until I sped it up to 1.5x, then it was just right.
February 7, 2021
Nech každý dostane šancu na rozvoj svojho talentu a skončí v živote tam, kde si zaslúži. Jedine na základe svojich schopností. Meritokracia. Predstava o spravodlivej spoločnosti, v ktorej by každý rástol na základe svojho talentu, je tak akceptovaná, že si ju prakticky už ani neuvedomujeme. Rovnosť šancí, zhoduje sa pravica a ľavica, diskutujeme akurát o tom, ako vie tomu najlepšie štát, či spoločnosť napomôcť.
Čo je ten ideál o ktorom snívame? Všetci na vrchu si to odmakali. Z bežných pomerov, na dobré školy a veľa práce po nej, aby človek mal ekonomický kapitál a status. Nechajme teraz bokom fakt, že rodinná stabilita, šťastie, prístup k vzdelaniu, to všetko výrazne predurčilo vaše šance na úspech. Predstavme si svet, v ktorom by sme toto všetko vyriešili a prístup k peniazom, postaveniu, by sa predurčoval jedine na základe objektívnej šikovnosti.
Ak ste sa narodili ako nevoľník pred tristo rokmi, aspoň ste si mohli povedať, že celé spoločenské usporiadanie je náhodné a neférové. Dnes, kedy všetko robíme pre vyrovnávanie šancí, podporu talentov, ak ste sa nedostali na vrchol pyramídy, je to najmä vaša chyba. A tí, ktorí prešli cez všetky výberové školy, Harvardy, konzultačky si to odmakali, sami za seba. Je to v celku depresívna predstava, ak sa na to pozeráte ako loser tejto hry.
Michael Sandel napísal minulý rok veľmi zaujímavú knihu, The Tyranny of Merit. Venuje sa veľmi populárnej téme krízy demokracie. Na rozdiel od zvyčajnej analýzy dezinformácií, ekonomického vykorisťovania či arogancie liberálov prináša pohľad, ktorý som doteraz nezachytil - je to šikana meritokracie, ktorá v ľuďoch vyvoláva odpor k súčasnosti.
Byť oligarchom, či dedičom impéria nie je cool. Je cool byť úspešný na základe vlastných schopností. Nebavíme sa teraz o najtalentovanejších športovcoch, umelcoch, vedcoch skrátka, ľuďoch, na ktorých sa vždy budeme chcieť pozerať a oceňovať ich, lebo zvládajú nejakú aktivitu mimoriadnym spôsobom. Bavme sa viac o ľuďoch v širšom vrchole pyramídy.
Konzultačky, či akékoľvek iné profesionálne prostredia, vyžadujúce si vysoko-kvalifikovanú silu, sú plné šikovných ľudí. Tí môžu maťzrejme zaslúžený pocit, že peniaze, ktoré zarábajú, im patria právom. Násobky priemernej mzdy. Áno, pracujú veľa a dlho, ale to aj mnohé iné povolania, ktoré finančne ani statusovo tak oceňované nie sú. Dnes tlieskame zdravotným sestrám, ale neprestáva ma dookola udivovať ako je akceptované mizivé ohodnotenie ich práce a všetkých zamestnancov (a najmä zamestnankýň) v tzv. starostlivých povolaniach. Špeciálne dnes, počas pandémie, sa toľko hovorí o tom, že bez nich a bez ľudí v logistike, maloobchode, či kuriérskych službách by naša spoločnosť nevedela ďalej fungovať. No prečo je to ok? Lebo pracujeme len s jednou predstavou talentu (dobrý konzultant vs. dobrá zdravotná sestra) a to, čo považujeme za hodnotu sa najčastejšie vyjadruje v účtovníctve. Spoločenský prínos nehrá veľmi rolu.
Okrem toho, že samotné ohodnocovanie šikovnosti je veľmi pokrivené, jednu vec nikdy nevyriešime. Talent je jediná črta, ktorá sa naozaj rozdeľuje náhodným spôsobom. Vo svojej podstate by stavať len na ňom bolo mimoriadne nespravodlivé. Nezaslúžil si sa o svoj talent a schopnosti, prečo ti z neho automaticky plynú mimoriadne výhody?
Sám Sandel nevie nájsť jednoduché riešenie ako z toho von. No jedna cesta, ktorá sa mi zdá dôležitá, je okrem šikovnosti a rovnosti šancí, hovoriť o dôstojnosti. Každý človek, bez ohľadu na svoj talent, si zaslúži rešpekt, a príspevok každého človeka k celkovému blahu by mal byť ocenený dôstojným spôsobom - a opäť, nielen finančne, ale aj statusom. A to, čo to spoločenské blaho je, by malo byť predmetom hlbokej diskusie. Lebo sa zdá, že tvrdé ekonomické ukazovatele toho veľmi veľa ignorujú. Dnes viac než kedykoľvek predtým vidíme, že ak sa nám pomaly začne rozsypávať spoločnosť len na víťazov a porazených, dlho to pokope neudržíme.
Čo je ten ideál o ktorom snívame? Všetci na vrchu si to odmakali. Z bežných pomerov, na dobré školy a veľa práce po nej, aby človek mal ekonomický kapitál a status. Nechajme teraz bokom fakt, že rodinná stabilita, šťastie, prístup k vzdelaniu, to všetko výrazne predurčilo vaše šance na úspech. Predstavme si svet, v ktorom by sme toto všetko vyriešili a prístup k peniazom, postaveniu, by sa predurčoval jedine na základe objektívnej šikovnosti.
Ak ste sa narodili ako nevoľník pred tristo rokmi, aspoň ste si mohli povedať, že celé spoločenské usporiadanie je náhodné a neférové. Dnes, kedy všetko robíme pre vyrovnávanie šancí, podporu talentov, ak ste sa nedostali na vrchol pyramídy, je to najmä vaša chyba. A tí, ktorí prešli cez všetky výberové školy, Harvardy, konzultačky si to odmakali, sami za seba. Je to v celku depresívna predstava, ak sa na to pozeráte ako loser tejto hry.
Michael Sandel napísal minulý rok veľmi zaujímavú knihu, The Tyranny of Merit. Venuje sa veľmi populárnej téme krízy demokracie. Na rozdiel od zvyčajnej analýzy dezinformácií, ekonomického vykorisťovania či arogancie liberálov prináša pohľad, ktorý som doteraz nezachytil - je to šikana meritokracie, ktorá v ľuďoch vyvoláva odpor k súčasnosti.
Byť oligarchom, či dedičom impéria nie je cool. Je cool byť úspešný na základe vlastných schopností. Nebavíme sa teraz o najtalentovanejších športovcoch, umelcoch, vedcoch skrátka, ľuďoch, na ktorých sa vždy budeme chcieť pozerať a oceňovať ich, lebo zvládajú nejakú aktivitu mimoriadnym spôsobom. Bavme sa viac o ľuďoch v širšom vrchole pyramídy.
Konzultačky, či akékoľvek iné profesionálne prostredia, vyžadujúce si vysoko-kvalifikovanú silu, sú plné šikovných ľudí. Tí môžu maťzrejme zaslúžený pocit, že peniaze, ktoré zarábajú, im patria právom. Násobky priemernej mzdy. Áno, pracujú veľa a dlho, ale to aj mnohé iné povolania, ktoré finančne ani statusovo tak oceňované nie sú. Dnes tlieskame zdravotným sestrám, ale neprestáva ma dookola udivovať ako je akceptované mizivé ohodnotenie ich práce a všetkých zamestnancov (a najmä zamestnankýň) v tzv. starostlivých povolaniach. Špeciálne dnes, počas pandémie, sa toľko hovorí o tom, že bez nich a bez ľudí v logistike, maloobchode, či kuriérskych službách by naša spoločnosť nevedela ďalej fungovať. No prečo je to ok? Lebo pracujeme len s jednou predstavou talentu (dobrý konzultant vs. dobrá zdravotná sestra) a to, čo považujeme za hodnotu sa najčastejšie vyjadruje v účtovníctve. Spoločenský prínos nehrá veľmi rolu.
Okrem toho, že samotné ohodnocovanie šikovnosti je veľmi pokrivené, jednu vec nikdy nevyriešime. Talent je jediná črta, ktorá sa naozaj rozdeľuje náhodným spôsobom. Vo svojej podstate by stavať len na ňom bolo mimoriadne nespravodlivé. Nezaslúžil si sa o svoj talent a schopnosti, prečo ti z neho automaticky plynú mimoriadne výhody?
Sám Sandel nevie nájsť jednoduché riešenie ako z toho von. No jedna cesta, ktorá sa mi zdá dôležitá, je okrem šikovnosti a rovnosti šancí, hovoriť o dôstojnosti. Každý človek, bez ohľadu na svoj talent, si zaslúži rešpekt, a príspevok každého človeka k celkovému blahu by mal byť ocenený dôstojným spôsobom - a opäť, nielen finančne, ale aj statusom. A to, čo to spoločenské blaho je, by malo byť predmetom hlbokej diskusie. Lebo sa zdá, že tvrdé ekonomické ukazovatele toho veľmi veľa ignorujú. Dnes viac než kedykoľvek predtým vidíme, že ak sa nám pomaly začne rozsypávať spoločnosť len na víťazov a porazených, dlho to pokope neudržíme.
August 8, 2021
What's become of the common good? Well, if we are to listen to the growing chorus of books on the topic, it has melted into the air or has wilted from neglect. With his latest work, Michael Sandel ventures into this fray. In The Tyranny of Merit, Sandel attempts to thread the fine needle between criticizing meritocracy and keeping the door shut on the older class and race-based hierarchies of yesteryear. As a whole, it's a strong work of moral and political philosophy. After a promising introduction, the second chapter gets bogged down when Sandel goes off chasing an unnecessary analogy with Protestantism. However, after that, Sandel gradually turns it around and proceeds to hit his stride in the later chapters, showing how the early promise of meritocracy has slipped into a more taxing hierarchy: more punitive on the have-nots for their lot and more easily allowing the haves to believe they have earned their status. Sandel makes a cogent case for reforming the meritocracy without going back to the old boys' network days of not too distant vintage. As the book itself makes clear--a clarity that the misleading subtitle betrays--there were no halcyon days of yore for the common good; for, under closer inspection, the golden days of midcentury prosperity for many proves to be fool's gold for the racial and social underclasses who were still subject to Jim Crow in these same years. We may, then, with some justification characterize Sandel's position by saying the old is dead, the new has not been born, and the meritocratic common good offspring came out stillborn. This work might leave you with the distinct impression that Sandel is becoming more Rawlsian, without necessarily sharing in the latter's original position. With that said, Sandel still has not pivoted from diagnosis to sharing in the solution. For that, we need to turn to other works. Still, as a whole, it's worth checking out. You should find it edifying. But you don't have to take my word for it.
November 10, 2020
Another entry into 'good academic tries to fulfil popular publishing contract', like 'How Democracies End' by David Runciman. The book could be condensed to about 50 pages. Very little actual research cited, very little philosophy. Most examples are from the US and UK (how many times can you read 'Like Donald Trump's election, and the 2016 Brexit vote in the UK'?), and other cherry-picked examples.
An important topic which I broadly agree with done over far too many pages with far too little effort very obviously to fill a publishing contract.
An important topic which I broadly agree with done over far too many pages with far too little effort very obviously to fill a publishing contract.
June 29, 2021
"The technocratic faith in markets set the stage for populist discontent. The market-driven version of globalization brought growing inequality. It also devalued national identities and allegiances. As goods and capital flowed freely across national borders, those who stood astride the global economy valorized cosmopolitan identities as a progressive enlightened alternative to the narrow, parochial ways of protectionism, tribalism, and conflict. The real political divide, they argued, was no longer left versus right but open versus closed. This implied that critics of outsourcing, free-trade agreements, and unrestricted capital flows were closed-minded rather than open-minded, tribal rather than global."
"To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic thriving on the social bonds that constitute our normal life."
"The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, combined with the idea that the elect must prove their election through work in a calling, leads to the notion that worldly success is a good indication of who is destined for salvation…this confers divine sanction on the division of labor and supports a ‘providential interpretation of the economic order….The humility prompted by helplessness in the face of grace gives way to the hubris prompted by belief in one’s own merit…In the end, merit drove out grace. The ethic of mastery and self-making overwhelmed the ethic of gratitude and humility. Working and striving became imperative of their own, detached from
calvinist notions of predestination and the anxious search for a sign of salvation."
"One of the casualties of meritocracy’s triumph may be the loss of broad public support for higher education. Once widely seen as an engine of opportunity, the university has become, at least for some, a symbol of credentialist privilege and meritocratic hubris."
"Foroohar argues that the primary takers in today’s economy are those in the financial industry who engage in speculative activity that reaps enormous windfalls without contributing to the real economy."
"Higher education has become a sorting machine that promises mobility on the basis of merit but entrenches privilege and promotes attitudes toward success corrosive of the commonality democracy require."
"Wages and salaries are not awards for good character or worthy achievement but simply payments that reflect the economic value of the goods and services market participants have to offer."
"The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is justification of inequality."
"One way of framing the globalization debate casts the ‘highly skilled, college-educated winners of the modern economy’ as open-minded and their critics as closed-minded, as if questioning the free flow of goods, capital, and people across national borders were a kind of bigotry. It is hard to imagine a more condescending way of defending neoliberal globalization to those it leaves behind."
An aside of powerful men enumerating their ‘wits’:
“I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship—the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship…and in fact ended up in the top half of my class. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits—only needed 123 credits—and I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours." (Joe Biden)
“I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School…That’s the number one law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in school.” (Brett Kavanaugh)
“Now, you know, I was a good student. I always hear about the elite. You know, the elite—they’re elite? I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in a bigger, more beautiful apartment. And I live in the White House, too, which is really great.” (Trump)
"To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic thriving on the social bonds that constitute our normal life."
"The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, combined with the idea that the elect must prove their election through work in a calling, leads to the notion that worldly success is a good indication of who is destined for salvation…this confers divine sanction on the division of labor and supports a ‘providential interpretation of the economic order….The humility prompted by helplessness in the face of grace gives way to the hubris prompted by belief in one’s own merit…In the end, merit drove out grace. The ethic of mastery and self-making overwhelmed the ethic of gratitude and humility. Working and striving became imperative of their own, detached from
calvinist notions of predestination and the anxious search for a sign of salvation."
"One of the casualties of meritocracy’s triumph may be the loss of broad public support for higher education. Once widely seen as an engine of opportunity, the university has become, at least for some, a symbol of credentialist privilege and meritocratic hubris."
"Foroohar argues that the primary takers in today’s economy are those in the financial industry who engage in speculative activity that reaps enormous windfalls without contributing to the real economy."
"Higher education has become a sorting machine that promises mobility on the basis of merit but entrenches privilege and promotes attitudes toward success corrosive of the commonality democracy require."
"Wages and salaries are not awards for good character or worthy achievement but simply payments that reflect the economic value of the goods and services market participants have to offer."
"The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is justification of inequality."
"One way of framing the globalization debate casts the ‘highly skilled, college-educated winners of the modern economy’ as open-minded and their critics as closed-minded, as if questioning the free flow of goods, capital, and people across national borders were a kind of bigotry. It is hard to imagine a more condescending way of defending neoliberal globalization to those it leaves behind."
An aside of powerful men enumerating their ‘wits’:
“I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship—the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship…and in fact ended up in the top half of my class. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits—only needed 123 credits—and I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours." (Joe Biden)
“I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School…That’s the number one law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in school.” (Brett Kavanaugh)
“Now, you know, I was a good student. I always hear about the elite. You know, the elite—they’re elite? I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in a bigger, more beautiful apartment. And I live in the White House, too, which is really great.” (Trump)
December 21, 2021
Time for contributive justice.
Slowly but surely this book reeled me in. In the US we have long since fetishized meritocracy, the idea that we are rewarded according to our efforts and talents. It is an incredibly enticing ideology that both modern political parties have bought into with disastrous consequences for the average American.
If we all subscribe to meritocracy then immediately we valorize income and profession. Immediate is the inference that those who have not succeeded deserve their lot and those that are successfully deserve all the wealth and accolades. Both neoliberal acolytes like Reagan and centric Democrats like Clinton created the age of technocratic moralizing. A college degree is supposed to be the ladder to success. Only that gateway has been closed to most for most of the existence of the US. And only with recent opening of admission to the underprivileged, the poor and non-white--the numbers still skew toward the privileged and legacy donors. A college degree also guarantees nothing anymore other than enormous debt. Education does very little for upward social mobility and the liberal elites have made it their platform of fixing our society for the last 40 years. What you get is social resentment and entire swathes of people left behind, seething in anger and ready for a populist back lash.
There is a difference between between value and merit. Some people indeed have inborn talents or discipline that they have worked hard to achieve. Yet, they also have the luck to live in a time where those talents happen to be rewarded. LeBron James would likely not be a famous multi-millionaire if he were born 100 years ago. Innate talent and drive are not the only factors of success but the social milieu in which they exist.
What white middle workers fear is not just economic loss, but cultural obsecelence. The dignity of work has been eroded and placed in the hands of the professional elite and the finance district. Why are capital gains taxes less than labor taxes? Because we place more value on the corporatocracy, believing it to be the driver of jobs. Yet globalization and financializaiton have rendered the "job creators" as the ultimate takers, cashing in with stock buybacks, dividends, LBOs or speculating on the market.
As the writer argues, it's time for contributive justice and not just distributive justice. Meaning, yes we can place earnings into the less fortunate but we can also bring dignity back to all work by actually allowing all peoples to contribute back to society, rather than only valuing them as consumers.
This was a phenomenal read. One of my fav of 2021.
Slowly but surely this book reeled me in. In the US we have long since fetishized meritocracy, the idea that we are rewarded according to our efforts and talents. It is an incredibly enticing ideology that both modern political parties have bought into with disastrous consequences for the average American.
If we all subscribe to meritocracy then immediately we valorize income and profession. Immediate is the inference that those who have not succeeded deserve their lot and those that are successfully deserve all the wealth and accolades. Both neoliberal acolytes like Reagan and centric Democrats like Clinton created the age of technocratic moralizing. A college degree is supposed to be the ladder to success. Only that gateway has been closed to most for most of the existence of the US. And only with recent opening of admission to the underprivileged, the poor and non-white--the numbers still skew toward the privileged and legacy donors. A college degree also guarantees nothing anymore other than enormous debt. Education does very little for upward social mobility and the liberal elites have made it their platform of fixing our society for the last 40 years. What you get is social resentment and entire swathes of people left behind, seething in anger and ready for a populist back lash.
There is a difference between between value and merit. Some people indeed have inborn talents or discipline that they have worked hard to achieve. Yet, they also have the luck to live in a time where those talents happen to be rewarded. LeBron James would likely not be a famous multi-millionaire if he were born 100 years ago. Innate talent and drive are not the only factors of success but the social milieu in which they exist.
What white middle workers fear is not just economic loss, but cultural obsecelence. The dignity of work has been eroded and placed in the hands of the professional elite and the finance district. Why are capital gains taxes less than labor taxes? Because we place more value on the corporatocracy, believing it to be the driver of jobs. Yet globalization and financializaiton have rendered the "job creators" as the ultimate takers, cashing in with stock buybacks, dividends, LBOs or speculating on the market.
As the writer argues, it's time for contributive justice and not just distributive justice. Meaning, yes we can place earnings into the less fortunate but we can also bring dignity back to all work by actually allowing all peoples to contribute back to society, rather than only valuing them as consumers.
This was a phenomenal read. One of my fav of 2021.
December 28, 2021
Michael Sandel straight up GOATed. What a legend. For some reason, his books really got me this year. I think Tyranny of Merit is at the top of my "full book is better than the one-hour podcast interview" list for 2021. My brain was exploding with thoughts the entire time, because this book is about a class of person I very squarely belong to: hard-working graduates of esteemed universities. So a lot of the arguments hit very close to home, and made me realize just how perverse the attitudes of this group are.
I’m going to start by describing where I was in my life when I came to this book, and then talk about the ideas in the book itself.
I think the reason Tyranny of Merit struck such a chord with me is because over the past few years, I have become very uncomfortable by how much I've personally been rewarded for things that I would describe as pure luck. (Please excuse the potentially self-aggrandizing content of the next two sentences.) Whether by genetics or by culture or both, I am a person who is very good at reading books, synthesizing information, public speaking, and spending huge amounts of time working on writing or research tasks. Now, I did not choose to be this way. I did not shape myself to have these interests and these skills. And yet I am constantly told that I "deserve" my successes. That my winning prestigious scholarships or being hired to do exclusive jobs is a reflection of my hard work, or skills, or something that I've done out of my own unique volition.
This has always made me deeply uncomfortable. I feel like I got very lucky to have certain skills that other people value, but the idea that that should translate to more social esteem, or me making more money, or me feeling like I am somehow better than other people is straight up whack. But this is what the universities are telling you, through a million little subliminal and overt messages, whispering “you’re the best and the brightest. You’re the most deserving. Go out and change the world” into your ear.
At the same time, I have spent the last two years running admissions for a Fellowship program for young people in tech. In some ways, this program is more equitable than universities. People don’t need to have impressive CVs or GPAs, and we don’t judge people based on their past achievements (which are often more a reflection of the opportunities they’ve been given), but rather on their character: self-motivation, thoughtfulness, hard work, willingness to take risks. But even then: what exactly is the message we’re sending the people who are accepted? “Congratulations: we have deemed you to be the most self-motivated, hard working, thoughtful applicant, and are therefore meritorious of the doors this Fellowship is about to open.”
Something about it just never sat right with me. I understand that sometimes in life there need to be opportunities that are exclusive. It is not true that everything should be available to everyone all the time. Imagine the horror if every person who wanted to go to medical school automatically got in. You’d have waaaaaay too many doctors, and plenty of people training to be doctors who really are not suited for the job. So obviously we need admissions processes and some kind of filter for our universities and other educational institutions, but without allowing people who enter these institutions to think they’re better than everyone else because they deserved to get in.
Enter The Tyranny of Merit. This book is a deep philosophical exploration of the concept of meritocracy and boy is it a treat. On the face of it, meritocracy seems like a fantastic idea because what it’s replacing—hereditary peerage, family lineages, religious exclusion—is so sinister. Surely it is better to have a system where the people who get the best education, govern, and lead are chosen based on their abilities and work ethic than a system where they are simply the descendants of the people who have traditionally held those roles.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that, in practice, the children of successful people usually end up being disproportionately successful in our current system, and imagine that we truly did have a system where the only thing that mattered was hard work, dedication, and smarts. What would be wrong then? Plenty.
The first thing is arrogance. If you credit your success to your hard work and brilliance, then you have no choice but to conclude that people who don't make it are lazy and dumb. It’d almost be better to have a non-meritocratic system in this sense: if you knew your success was due to your surname, you would at least be aware that the people who aren’t at your stratum of the society are probably quite skilled in their own way.
Second, if you feel that you deserve your success, then any benefits that accrue your way are simply evidence of your meritoriousness. All of your money is simply evidence of your brilliance, and is deservedly yours. If we look at today’s tech billionaires, they surely feel that their immense wealth and power is justified because it was earned through their charisma and determination. In choosing to reward these characteristics through a meritocracy, we are implicitly empowering the people at the top to feel they deserve their disproportionate success.
Finally, and perhaps most perniciously, the idea of a meritocracy implies that the best place to be in society is at the top. It creates a situation where people are constantly competing to out-work and out-rank each other, because the most prestige and success accrues to the people with the most talent and effort. In the domain I know best, university admissions, this means that people stress themselves out with extracurriculars in a race to the bottom to see who can have the most impressive-sounding volunteer positions. What if instead we had a system where no one felt pressure to climb? Where you could just be content where you were? Why is ascending the social or financial ladder necessarily so good?
Let’s take a step back. Why do we even have this system where universities hold the keys to so much future success, anyway? Why do university graduates have such an enormous and disproportionate advantage in income, wealth, health, and opportunity? Why is this “anyone can make it” mentality so prevalent in America?
The story Sandel tells is roughly this: at some point in the past, success and privilege was based purely on arbitrary factors like who one’s parents were. Then, in the middle of the 20th century, America became somewhat more equitable, but vastly more meritocratic and credentialist. Nepotism was on the way out, and meritocracy was on the way in. Elite universities, which previously accepted as many as 70% of applicants, realized that their competitive advantage was their exclusivity. More and more people applied to universities because that was the gateway to the good life, but the number of people accepted into exclusive colleges remained constant. Instead of being places for education, colleges were gatekeepers for the production of elites. Instead of creating a culture in which the worst-off people were supported through strong public institutions, American elites promoted the idea that anyone could make it in America if they worked hard. And if anyone can make it through hard work, then it’s the fault of the people who don’t make it for not working hard enough.
What an unfortunate turn of events. Instead of aspiring to a society where everyone can make a contribution to the common good and feel good about their status & role, we’ve created one where everyone is constantly trying to ascend, with that ascension gated by elite universities. The “winners” get to be in medicine, or law, or finance, and the “losers” are service workers, or personal support workers, or some other job that is viewed as a consolation prize rather than an important and valuable line of work.
Needless to say, this is bad. In a perfect society, everyone ought to feel like the work they were doing was contributing in some way to the public good. Of course, people should obtain further education if they’re looking to gain particular skills and expertise, and different types of work will of course be compensated differently. But everyone should ultimately feel that their success is due first and foremost to good luck, and second to the common shared infrastructure—public schools, libraries, the internet, government programs—that allows anyone to achieve great things. In an optimal society, no one would feel the need to rise to the top, because at every rung on the income ladder, people should feel able to live happy and fulfilling lives. This is not to say that no one should be ambitious. People should always be empowered to pursue their dreams. But they should do so out of genuine motivation, not a sense that they either make it to the elite rung of society or are squeezed out.
What can actually be done in practice here? Sandel has a few solutions, but one in particular stood out to me: making university acceptances random. Obviously not truly random: there should be some sort of minimum cut-off, or basic screening process to make sure that the people going to university are in fact people who will thrive in an environment that involves reading, writing, studying, and discussing scholarly ideas. You could even weigh the random selection in order to ensure that historically marginalized groups or (if the Ivy Leagues really insisted) children of donors were well-represented.
Random selection ensures a few things: (1) University acceptance is no longer based on the length of your list of extracurriculars, so you can now feel free to only pursue things you’re actually interested in. (2) People who are accepted into elite universities will understand that their acceptance was due in large part to luck, which might lead them to feel less like they “deserve” their future success. (3) University admissions might come to be viewed less about hand-picking the elite, and more about bringing in a group of people to engage in scholarly activity and receive an education. And frankly, it’s very hard how to predict in advance who will profit the most from that scholarly activity and education. In other words, our best guess at who will thrive in a university is already somewhat random. We can make educated guesses, but people often grow substantially and surprise us. Might as well acknowledge that in the process itself.
Alright. I’m going to stop now. I don’t even know if these are book reviews anymore, as much as they’re me using the books I read as a launching pad to discuss social issues I care about. Either way, Tyranny of Merit happened to hit me at precisely the right time, and convinced me that the mark of a great society is not that everyone has opportunities to make their lives better, but that everyone has the means to feel content with their lives as they are.
I’m going to start by describing where I was in my life when I came to this book, and then talk about the ideas in the book itself.
I think the reason Tyranny of Merit struck such a chord with me is because over the past few years, I have become very uncomfortable by how much I've personally been rewarded for things that I would describe as pure luck. (Please excuse the potentially self-aggrandizing content of the next two sentences.) Whether by genetics or by culture or both, I am a person who is very good at reading books, synthesizing information, public speaking, and spending huge amounts of time working on writing or research tasks. Now, I did not choose to be this way. I did not shape myself to have these interests and these skills. And yet I am constantly told that I "deserve" my successes. That my winning prestigious scholarships or being hired to do exclusive jobs is a reflection of my hard work, or skills, or something that I've done out of my own unique volition.
This has always made me deeply uncomfortable. I feel like I got very lucky to have certain skills that other people value, but the idea that that should translate to more social esteem, or me making more money, or me feeling like I am somehow better than other people is straight up whack. But this is what the universities are telling you, through a million little subliminal and overt messages, whispering “you’re the best and the brightest. You’re the most deserving. Go out and change the world” into your ear.
At the same time, I have spent the last two years running admissions for a Fellowship program for young people in tech. In some ways, this program is more equitable than universities. People don’t need to have impressive CVs or GPAs, and we don’t judge people based on their past achievements (which are often more a reflection of the opportunities they’ve been given), but rather on their character: self-motivation, thoughtfulness, hard work, willingness to take risks. But even then: what exactly is the message we’re sending the people who are accepted? “Congratulations: we have deemed you to be the most self-motivated, hard working, thoughtful applicant, and are therefore meritorious of the doors this Fellowship is about to open.”
Something about it just never sat right with me. I understand that sometimes in life there need to be opportunities that are exclusive. It is not true that everything should be available to everyone all the time. Imagine the horror if every person who wanted to go to medical school automatically got in. You’d have waaaaaay too many doctors, and plenty of people training to be doctors who really are not suited for the job. So obviously we need admissions processes and some kind of filter for our universities and other educational institutions, but without allowing people who enter these institutions to think they’re better than everyone else because they deserved to get in.
Enter The Tyranny of Merit. This book is a deep philosophical exploration of the concept of meritocracy and boy is it a treat. On the face of it, meritocracy seems like a fantastic idea because what it’s replacing—hereditary peerage, family lineages, religious exclusion—is so sinister. Surely it is better to have a system where the people who get the best education, govern, and lead are chosen based on their abilities and work ethic than a system where they are simply the descendants of the people who have traditionally held those roles.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that, in practice, the children of successful people usually end up being disproportionately successful in our current system, and imagine that we truly did have a system where the only thing that mattered was hard work, dedication, and smarts. What would be wrong then? Plenty.
The first thing is arrogance. If you credit your success to your hard work and brilliance, then you have no choice but to conclude that people who don't make it are lazy and dumb. It’d almost be better to have a non-meritocratic system in this sense: if you knew your success was due to your surname, you would at least be aware that the people who aren’t at your stratum of the society are probably quite skilled in their own way.
Second, if you feel that you deserve your success, then any benefits that accrue your way are simply evidence of your meritoriousness. All of your money is simply evidence of your brilliance, and is deservedly yours. If we look at today’s tech billionaires, they surely feel that their immense wealth and power is justified because it was earned through their charisma and determination. In choosing to reward these characteristics through a meritocracy, we are implicitly empowering the people at the top to feel they deserve their disproportionate success.
Finally, and perhaps most perniciously, the idea of a meritocracy implies that the best place to be in society is at the top. It creates a situation where people are constantly competing to out-work and out-rank each other, because the most prestige and success accrues to the people with the most talent and effort. In the domain I know best, university admissions, this means that people stress themselves out with extracurriculars in a race to the bottom to see who can have the most impressive-sounding volunteer positions. What if instead we had a system where no one felt pressure to climb? Where you could just be content where you were? Why is ascending the social or financial ladder necessarily so good?
Let’s take a step back. Why do we even have this system where universities hold the keys to so much future success, anyway? Why do university graduates have such an enormous and disproportionate advantage in income, wealth, health, and opportunity? Why is this “anyone can make it” mentality so prevalent in America?
The story Sandel tells is roughly this: at some point in the past, success and privilege was based purely on arbitrary factors like who one’s parents were. Then, in the middle of the 20th century, America became somewhat more equitable, but vastly more meritocratic and credentialist. Nepotism was on the way out, and meritocracy was on the way in. Elite universities, which previously accepted as many as 70% of applicants, realized that their competitive advantage was their exclusivity. More and more people applied to universities because that was the gateway to the good life, but the number of people accepted into exclusive colleges remained constant. Instead of being places for education, colleges were gatekeepers for the production of elites. Instead of creating a culture in which the worst-off people were supported through strong public institutions, American elites promoted the idea that anyone could make it in America if they worked hard. And if anyone can make it through hard work, then it’s the fault of the people who don’t make it for not working hard enough.
What an unfortunate turn of events. Instead of aspiring to a society where everyone can make a contribution to the common good and feel good about their status & role, we’ve created one where everyone is constantly trying to ascend, with that ascension gated by elite universities. The “winners” get to be in medicine, or law, or finance, and the “losers” are service workers, or personal support workers, or some other job that is viewed as a consolation prize rather than an important and valuable line of work.
Needless to say, this is bad. In a perfect society, everyone ought to feel like the work they were doing was contributing in some way to the public good. Of course, people should obtain further education if they’re looking to gain particular skills and expertise, and different types of work will of course be compensated differently. But everyone should ultimately feel that their success is due first and foremost to good luck, and second to the common shared infrastructure—public schools, libraries, the internet, government programs—that allows anyone to achieve great things. In an optimal society, no one would feel the need to rise to the top, because at every rung on the income ladder, people should feel able to live happy and fulfilling lives. This is not to say that no one should be ambitious. People should always be empowered to pursue their dreams. But they should do so out of genuine motivation, not a sense that they either make it to the elite rung of society or are squeezed out.
What can actually be done in practice here? Sandel has a few solutions, but one in particular stood out to me: making university acceptances random. Obviously not truly random: there should be some sort of minimum cut-off, or basic screening process to make sure that the people going to university are in fact people who will thrive in an environment that involves reading, writing, studying, and discussing scholarly ideas. You could even weigh the random selection in order to ensure that historically marginalized groups or (if the Ivy Leagues really insisted) children of donors were well-represented.
Random selection ensures a few things: (1) University acceptance is no longer based on the length of your list of extracurriculars, so you can now feel free to only pursue things you’re actually interested in. (2) People who are accepted into elite universities will understand that their acceptance was due in large part to luck, which might lead them to feel less like they “deserve” their future success. (3) University admissions might come to be viewed less about hand-picking the elite, and more about bringing in a group of people to engage in scholarly activity and receive an education. And frankly, it’s very hard how to predict in advance who will profit the most from that scholarly activity and education. In other words, our best guess at who will thrive in a university is already somewhat random. We can make educated guesses, but people often grow substantially and surprise us. Might as well acknowledge that in the process itself.
Alright. I’m going to stop now. I don’t even know if these are book reviews anymore, as much as they’re me using the books I read as a launching pad to discuss social issues I care about. Either way, Tyranny of Merit happened to hit me at precisely the right time, and convinced me that the mark of a great society is not that everyone has opportunities to make their lives better, but that everyone has the means to feel content with their lives as they are.
Read
December 22, 2020Professor Sandel asserts with this work that the American meritocracy is an illusion, one he adeptly parses, while providing important insight into our national political dynamics, specifically, the seemingly incomprehensible adoration for President Trump, who received some 74 million votes in the most recent election. There must be something very much awry in our republic for a man of such reprehensible character to receive such broad, enthusiastic support. Professor Sandel reports much is indeed awry, for we now live in a self-reinforcing world of educated haves and uneducated have-nots. How ironic that this work was authored by someone perched atop that meritocracy; then again, who better to describe the machine than one of its cogs? Yet, I largely agree with both his analysis and conclusions, particularly with respect to education.
While the anomalies associated with our society point to notable inefficiencies, I’m struck that we live in an environment experiencing accelerating change, one that defies simple analysis. Think of the change a European witnessed between, say, the years 1050 and 1100. Now, compare the changes witnessed from 1970 to 2020. It’s one thing to speak of optimizing social outcomes in a static environment; introduce change – and ever-increasing change at that – and optimization becomes daunting, I think.
Government especially will forever be behind the curve on adapting to social change, as the obvious inability to anticipate or react to issues involving technology demonstrates. Gross wealth accumulation in this country, to pick on just one aberration, is fostered by systems, laws and policies constructed with little to no allowance for dynamic progression, where a meritocracy has become focused on gaming those structures, which they themselves helped create, for selfish purposes and with enviable aplomb – large company CEO compensation easily comes to mind as one notable and ever growing excess, one that seems to know no limit. I am pessimistic for a better order, one where the effects of randomness, often confused with earned and deserved skill, are fairly considered in social reward structures and our naturally endowed wealth is apportioned with greater equality. Does anyone really believe our elected representatives are up to the task? I wish to be proven wrong.
While the anomalies associated with our society point to notable inefficiencies, I’m struck that we live in an environment experiencing accelerating change, one that defies simple analysis. Think of the change a European witnessed between, say, the years 1050 and 1100. Now, compare the changes witnessed from 1970 to 2020. It’s one thing to speak of optimizing social outcomes in a static environment; introduce change – and ever-increasing change at that – and optimization becomes daunting, I think.
Government especially will forever be behind the curve on adapting to social change, as the obvious inability to anticipate or react to issues involving technology demonstrates. Gross wealth accumulation in this country, to pick on just one aberration, is fostered by systems, laws and policies constructed with little to no allowance for dynamic progression, where a meritocracy has become focused on gaming those structures, which they themselves helped create, for selfish purposes and with enviable aplomb – large company CEO compensation easily comes to mind as one notable and ever growing excess, one that seems to know no limit. I am pessimistic for a better order, one where the effects of randomness, often confused with earned and deserved skill, are fairly considered in social reward structures and our naturally endowed wealth is apportioned with greater equality. Does anyone really believe our elected representatives are up to the task? I wish to be proven wrong.
January 25, 2021
I loved Sandel's book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? His power is incisive analysis: he cuts to the Augustinian heart of divisive issues using classic philosophical tools. He also explains all this slowly and clearly. He is the single most gifted guide of classroom discussion that I have ever seen (I not only read Justice; I watched the WBUR Boston recordings of his class; they were sterling).
This book wasn't quite as lean and refined as Justice; it also didn't deal with as important a topic. It was a bit long and a bit repetitive (though because I listened to the audio, read patiently and engagingly by the author, that actually worked out well). And it didn't seem to me to solve the dilemma it kept tossing from hand to hand for hour after hour: If meritocracy isn't so great, and aristocracy not so great either, then what?!
But I'm burying a really important lede: What Sandel did do was give me the best answer I've yet seen to a question I haven't been able to answer since 2016—why in the world did so many Americans vote for reality TV star Donald Trump?! This wasn't the point of the book, more of a very important supporting argument. The main argument was that meritocracy sounds good as a means of allocating certain sought-after goods in a society such as admission to elite colleges and access to high-paying and valorized professions. But—and I'll never forget this—meritocracy tends to make the "winners" feel arrogantly self-congratulatory, forgetful of how very many aspects of their success had nothing to do with their effort; and it tends to make the "losers" feel, well, like that's just what they are. They didn't have the talent or drive to achieve the American Dream, so they're out. Here's where Trump comes in: regular people who do work essential to our society *but not valorized by it* don't like it when elites look down on them. It's galling to hear Hillary Clinton call vast numbers of people "a basket of deplorables," to hear President Obama sneering at those who trust in "God and guns." It's offensive to be told that you are racist for complaining about factory jobs being taken by people in other countries. And yet meritocracy has not only produced all this, it has tempted elites to talk as if credentials equal intelligence, to boot. (I think of Matthew Crawford's Shopclass as Soulcraft, an excellent book, which showed the intellectual challenges inherent in much manual work.)
Aristocracy may keep the peasants and serfs down, but at least they can say to themselves, "I have the talent to rise." They are less likely to conclude, "I am a loser." And aristocracy can produce a noblesse oblige on the part of the aristocrats: they know they don't deserve their privilege, so they share their wealth.
This again, is where I say, "Then what?!" Because I just don't see the West moving back to aristocracy, not on purpose. And if I'm stuck behind Rawls' pre-birth curtain, I'd still choose the meritocratic society and its opportunity over the aristocratic one and its stratified classes. (Though I admit I was shocked to discover that upward mobility in America is actually noticeably lower than it is in a number of European countries.)
So I appreciated Sandel's practical suggestions for toning down the worst elements of meritocracy. And there was a huge irony in one of his key suggestions. Follow me… Sandel critiqued Puritanism as if it were straight up Pelagianism. There was one key line that was just so egregiously wrong—and yet, in a way, perfectly right. He said that the Puritan emphasis on God's grace in election got twisted into self-congratulation for being elect. That is so, so wrong, because Puritans of all people knew that they humbly had no purchase on God's grace, nothing in them to merit it. And yet they would be the first to point out that the human heart is so fallen that it can turn God's grace into a badge of pride. Instead of a critique of the Puritans, I heard in Sandel a critique of human nature. Sandel knows from long labor, I will hazard, that secularism and classical liberalism don't offer serious moral philosophies, so he takes theology seriously, something for which I was grateful. And here I come back to the irony. He proved to me that meritocracy on elite campuses—like the Harvard where he has taught for four decades—is terribly harmful, to the meritocrats and the basket of deplorables alike. He persuaded me that a lottery system would be a much better way for Harvard to select applicants. But by doing this he is, to my mind, implicitly arguing for the grace of God. The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
Sandel also argued that one way to valorize work rightly would be to legally curtail the money markets, the complex financial instruments that can net millions for the right bettors without actually doing much of anything to invest in business or produce any goods and services of value. This I found persuasive, too.
Biblical theology teaches from its very first page that work is a God-given good. God told Adam to "work and keep" the garden even before the fall. But by page 3, human work has been deeply frustrated by the fall: we've got thorns and thistles everywhere. Sandel's calls to valorize all good work rang biblically true for me.
So did his critiques of meritocracy. One of the most important parables in my theology is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. It shows that no one will get less good than he deserves for his work, but that the Master is generous and sometimes spills out amazing blessing on some and not others. All good I enjoy is by God's grace. There's a reason that conservative evangelical Christians keep saying this to one another. We both believe it and are, by that phrase, asking that Master to help our unbelief. To diminish our pride, our tendency to hoard moral merit in our hearts.
Sandel's book gives me some intellectual tools, tools of careful moral philosophy and of assiduous and wise observation of our world, to help me trust more to God's grace and to be humble and grateful.
This book wasn't quite as lean and refined as Justice; it also didn't deal with as important a topic. It was a bit long and a bit repetitive (though because I listened to the audio, read patiently and engagingly by the author, that actually worked out well). And it didn't seem to me to solve the dilemma it kept tossing from hand to hand for hour after hour: If meritocracy isn't so great, and aristocracy not so great either, then what?!
But I'm burying a really important lede: What Sandel did do was give me the best answer I've yet seen to a question I haven't been able to answer since 2016—why in the world did so many Americans vote for reality TV star Donald Trump?! This wasn't the point of the book, more of a very important supporting argument. The main argument was that meritocracy sounds good as a means of allocating certain sought-after goods in a society such as admission to elite colleges and access to high-paying and valorized professions. But—and I'll never forget this—meritocracy tends to make the "winners" feel arrogantly self-congratulatory, forgetful of how very many aspects of their success had nothing to do with their effort; and it tends to make the "losers" feel, well, like that's just what they are. They didn't have the talent or drive to achieve the American Dream, so they're out. Here's where Trump comes in: regular people who do work essential to our society *but not valorized by it* don't like it when elites look down on them. It's galling to hear Hillary Clinton call vast numbers of people "a basket of deplorables," to hear President Obama sneering at those who trust in "God and guns." It's offensive to be told that you are racist for complaining about factory jobs being taken by people in other countries. And yet meritocracy has not only produced all this, it has tempted elites to talk as if credentials equal intelligence, to boot. (I think of Matthew Crawford's Shopclass as Soulcraft, an excellent book, which showed the intellectual challenges inherent in much manual work.)
Aristocracy may keep the peasants and serfs down, but at least they can say to themselves, "I have the talent to rise." They are less likely to conclude, "I am a loser." And aristocracy can produce a noblesse oblige on the part of the aristocrats: they know they don't deserve their privilege, so they share their wealth.
This again, is where I say, "Then what?!" Because I just don't see the West moving back to aristocracy, not on purpose. And if I'm stuck behind Rawls' pre-birth curtain, I'd still choose the meritocratic society and its opportunity over the aristocratic one and its stratified classes. (Though I admit I was shocked to discover that upward mobility in America is actually noticeably lower than it is in a number of European countries.)
So I appreciated Sandel's practical suggestions for toning down the worst elements of meritocracy. And there was a huge irony in one of his key suggestions. Follow me… Sandel critiqued Puritanism as if it were straight up Pelagianism. There was one key line that was just so egregiously wrong—and yet, in a way, perfectly right. He said that the Puritan emphasis on God's grace in election got twisted into self-congratulation for being elect. That is so, so wrong, because Puritans of all people knew that they humbly had no purchase on God's grace, nothing in them to merit it. And yet they would be the first to point out that the human heart is so fallen that it can turn God's grace into a badge of pride. Instead of a critique of the Puritans, I heard in Sandel a critique of human nature. Sandel knows from long labor, I will hazard, that secularism and classical liberalism don't offer serious moral philosophies, so he takes theology seriously, something for which I was grateful. And here I come back to the irony. He proved to me that meritocracy on elite campuses—like the Harvard where he has taught for four decades—is terribly harmful, to the meritocrats and the basket of deplorables alike. He persuaded me that a lottery system would be a much better way for Harvard to select applicants. But by doing this he is, to my mind, implicitly arguing for the grace of God. The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
Sandel also argued that one way to valorize work rightly would be to legally curtail the money markets, the complex financial instruments that can net millions for the right bettors without actually doing much of anything to invest in business or produce any goods and services of value. This I found persuasive, too.
Biblical theology teaches from its very first page that work is a God-given good. God told Adam to "work and keep" the garden even before the fall. But by page 3, human work has been deeply frustrated by the fall: we've got thorns and thistles everywhere. Sandel's calls to valorize all good work rang biblically true for me.
So did his critiques of meritocracy. One of the most important parables in my theology is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. It shows that no one will get less good than he deserves for his work, but that the Master is generous and sometimes spills out amazing blessing on some and not others. All good I enjoy is by God's grace. There's a reason that conservative evangelical Christians keep saying this to one another. We both believe it and are, by that phrase, asking that Master to help our unbelief. To diminish our pride, our tendency to hoard moral merit in our hearts.
Sandel's book gives me some intellectual tools, tools of careful moral philosophy and of assiduous and wise observation of our world, to help me trust more to God's grace and to be humble and grateful.
May 9, 2021
Although repetitive, "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" (2020) by Michael Sandel was the most transformative book I have read in recent years, as it touches on fundamental current issues that explain the intricate human relations of our society at the beginning of this century. The principal point of this book is revealed as: The dignity of our work is not measured by the salary we receive.
A análise completa, extensa, encontra-se no meu blog em Português:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
A análise completa, extensa, encontra-se no meu blog em Português:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
September 20, 2020
The Common Good is for you to pay for Sandel's wages, pension, health care, even his nephew's education. So perish the thought of you enjoying your earnings, because Sandel has made plans to speak in Europe, all expenses paid by you.
June 28, 2021
Este es el tercer libro de Sandel que leo. Aunque en una medida importante es un desarrollo adicional a su ética comunitaria (una ética que promueve y privilegia el interés por la comunidad y las virtudes ciudadanas), el enfoque de este libro ha sido para mí el más sorprendente de los tres, pues ataca un modelo que yo siempre había visto promovido como algo bueno: el de la meritocracia.
En este libro Sandel explica cómo la meritocracia es defectuosa debido a que justifica la desigualdad y promueve actitudes nocivas para la vida en sociedad, principalmente un sentimiento de merecimiento por parte de aquellos que han tenido más éxito, y sentimientos de frustración y resentimiento por parte de aquellos que no lo han tenido. Estos sentimientos no solo deterioran la vida en comunidad, sino que son inapropiados dado que aquellos que terminan en lo más alto de la cima meritocrática siempre deben gran parte de su éxito al contexto social en el que viven.
Sandel le da vuelta a estas ideas una y otra vez a lo largo del escrito (de hecho, creo que le da demasiadas vueltas al asunto y en varios momentos me pareció que el libro pudo haber sido más corto sin que con ellos se estuviese sacrificando ni claridad, ni contundencia). Y esto era lo que esperaba del libro. Lo que me sorprendió fue la forma en que Sandel expone su hipótesis según la cual el modelo meritocrático tal vez es responsable de las victorias que en los últimos años tuvieron demagogos de derecha en países como Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido. Así, el libro se convierte no solamente en una análisis ético interesante, sino en una explicación de la coyuntura política.
Hacia finales del libro, el autor pasa de exponer los problemas con el problema meritocrático, a aventurar algunas soluciones o modelos alternativos. Aquí es donde más salen a relucir las ideas tradicionales de Sandel sobre la importancia de las virtudes comunitarias. Sandel propone que se debe promover una reevaluación de la dignidad del trabajo y proponer por una justicia contributiva en la que se dé valor a las contribuciones que cada miembro de la sociedad hace por el bien común.
Más allá de lo repetitivo que se vuelve en algunos capítulos, creo que las críticas que se hacen en el libro a la meritocracia son importantes y necesarias para revaluar algunos de los valores que parecen haber ganado aceptación generalizada en las últimas décadas.
En este libro Sandel explica cómo la meritocracia es defectuosa debido a que justifica la desigualdad y promueve actitudes nocivas para la vida en sociedad, principalmente un sentimiento de merecimiento por parte de aquellos que han tenido más éxito, y sentimientos de frustración y resentimiento por parte de aquellos que no lo han tenido. Estos sentimientos no solo deterioran la vida en comunidad, sino que son inapropiados dado que aquellos que terminan en lo más alto de la cima meritocrática siempre deben gran parte de su éxito al contexto social en el que viven.
Sandel le da vuelta a estas ideas una y otra vez a lo largo del escrito (de hecho, creo que le da demasiadas vueltas al asunto y en varios momentos me pareció que el libro pudo haber sido más corto sin que con ellos se estuviese sacrificando ni claridad, ni contundencia). Y esto era lo que esperaba del libro. Lo que me sorprendió fue la forma en que Sandel expone su hipótesis según la cual el modelo meritocrático tal vez es responsable de las victorias que en los últimos años tuvieron demagogos de derecha en países como Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido. Así, el libro se convierte no solamente en una análisis ético interesante, sino en una explicación de la coyuntura política.
Hacia finales del libro, el autor pasa de exponer los problemas con el problema meritocrático, a aventurar algunas soluciones o modelos alternativos. Aquí es donde más salen a relucir las ideas tradicionales de Sandel sobre la importancia de las virtudes comunitarias. Sandel propone que se debe promover una reevaluación de la dignidad del trabajo y proponer por una justicia contributiva en la que se dé valor a las contribuciones que cada miembro de la sociedad hace por el bien común.
Más allá de lo repetitivo que se vuelve en algunos capítulos, creo que las críticas que se hacen en el libro a la meritocracia son importantes y necesarias para revaluar algunos de los valores que parecen haber ganado aceptación generalizada en las últimas décadas.
January 28, 2022
خلاصه کتاب را در بی پلاس شنیدم و مشتاق شدم که در فرصت مناسب بخونمش. :)
سندل در این کتاب موضوع چالش برانگیزی را به چالش می کشه و اون شایسته سالاری هست که در جامعه امروزی ما هم به شدت در دوران خاصی استفاده میشد.میخواد بگه که در ظاهر شایسته سالاری از نظر عموم مردم چیز پسندیده و درستی هست که مشخصا افراد بر اساس توانایی و استعداد در مناصب و جایگاه های خاصی قرار میگیرن ولی کم کم با مثال و استدلال به این نتیجه میرسه که همین شایسته سالاری خودش به نوعی باعث شده که همه افراد بصورت مساوی در جایگاه واقعی قرار نگیرند یا از بعضی امکانات محروم بشن،بالفرض جایگاه دانشگاه ها را بخصوص در جوامع سرمایه داری مثال میزنه( البته در سالیان اخیر در کشور ما هم مشاهده میشه) که پول جای استعداد واقعی را گرفته و هر کسی از امکانات مادی بیشتر بهره برده باشه مسلما در دانشگاه هم میتونه وارد بشه حالا یا با شهریه بیشتر و کمک مالی به دانشگاه یا با رفتن به کلاسهای آموزشی و بالا بردن سطح علمی خودش برای آزمون ورودی دانشگاه که اونم مستلزم داشتن پول بیشتره.نویسنده حتی به این موضوع هم اشاره میکنه که حتی داشتن استعداد در یک زمینه خاص هم خودش به نوعی همون استبداد در شایسته سالاری را باعث میشه یعنی بالفرض اینکه فرد خاصی استعداد خاصی داشته باشه که بقیه ازش محروم باشند اون استعداد یک نوع تبعیض به شمار میاد یعنی میخواد بگه اون هم دلیل بر شایسته سالاری اون شخص نمیتونه باشه ، چون از اول یک گام نسبت به بقیه با اون استعداد جلوتر بوده،این منطق نویسنده شاید در ابتدا زیاد قابل فهم و توجیه نباشه ولی کم کم با مثالهای مختلف و استدلال ثابت میکنه که شایسته سالاری هم خودش باعث بوجود آمدن استبداد خاصی در انتخاب افراد شده که درسته که ظاهر قشنگی داره ولی آسیب ها و معایب خودش را خواهد داشت.
(پنج شنبه ۷ بهمن ۱۴۰۰ شنیده شد - نسخه چاپی در فرصت مناسب خوانده شود)
سندل در این کتاب موضوع چالش برانگیزی را به چالش می کشه و اون شایسته سالاری هست که در جامعه امروزی ما هم به شدت در دوران خاصی استفاده میشد.میخواد بگه که در ظاهر شایسته سالاری از نظر عموم مردم چیز پسندیده و درستی هست که مشخصا افراد بر اساس توانایی و استعداد در مناصب و جایگاه های خاصی قرار میگیرن ولی کم کم با مثال و استدلال به این نتیجه میرسه که همین شایسته سالاری خودش به نوعی باعث شده که همه افراد بصورت مساوی در جایگاه واقعی قرار نگیرند یا از بعضی امکانات محروم بشن،بالفرض جایگاه دانشگاه ها را بخصوص در جوامع سرمایه داری مثال میزنه( البته در سالیان اخیر در کشور ما هم مشاهده میشه) که پول جای استعداد واقعی را گرفته و هر کسی از امکانات مادی بیشتر بهره برده باشه مسلما در دانشگاه هم میتونه وارد بشه حالا یا با شهریه بیشتر و کمک مالی به دانشگاه یا با رفتن به کلاسهای آموزشی و بالا بردن سطح علمی خودش برای آزمون ورودی دانشگاه که اونم مستلزم داشتن پول بیشتره.نویسنده حتی به این موضوع هم اشاره میکنه که حتی داشتن استعداد در یک زمینه خاص هم خودش به نوعی همون استبداد در شایسته سالاری را باعث میشه یعنی بالفرض اینکه فرد خاصی استعداد خاصی داشته باشه که بقیه ازش محروم باشند اون استعداد یک نوع تبعیض به شمار میاد یعنی میخواد بگه اون هم دلیل بر شایسته سالاری اون شخص نمیتونه باشه ، چون از اول یک گام نسبت به بقیه با اون استعداد جلوتر بوده،این منطق نویسنده شاید در ابتدا زیاد قابل فهم و توجیه نباشه ولی کم کم با مثالهای مختلف و استدلال ثابت میکنه که شایسته سالاری هم خودش باعث بوجود آمدن استبداد خاصی در انتخاب افراد شده که درسته که ظاهر قشنگی داره ولی آسیب ها و معایب خودش را خواهد داشت.
(پنج شنبه ۷ بهمن ۱۴۰۰ شنیده شد - نسخه چاپی در فرصت مناسب خوانده شود)
March 10, 2021
For most of my life, I’ve taken for granted that the idea of “equality of opportunity,” or meritocracy, while not perfect, is a democracy’s best tool to ensure everyone a fair place at the starting line. This book changed my mind. In the words of author Michael J. Sandel, “The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.”
For an extended review of this title, check out Audiobook Reviews in Five Minutes: https://podcast.jannastam.com/episode...
For an extended review of this title, check out Audiobook Reviews in Five Minutes: https://podcast.jannastam.com/episode...
January 20, 2024
Meritocracy has become toxic when merged with highly unequal pecuniary awards, which open up huge gaps in dignity, says Sandel. We need to develop a notion of "contributive justice" in which everyone is properly appreciated for the contribution they make the collective good, with prestige judged on that basis, rather than simply on how much money we make.
September 17, 2021
The Tyranny of Merit has its heart in the right place but not necessarily or not always the head.
The first thing the book gets entirely right, although perhaps to its consternation with no disagreement from anyone anywhere, is that the world is not a fair place. In many fields that people claim those with merits win are full of winners who happen to be at the right place at the right time or, much worse, with the winners emerging on top using unacceptable methods. Not only that those with merits do not always win, but many who have the merits - as the book wonderfully shows - acquire their merits due to chance factors. For example, some people are born with the right talents or background that help them be good at certain things. In a way, these are people with merits because they are lucky.
As important as the above points are, they are incontrovertible even in the eyes of extreme libertarians, conservatives, free-market proponents, capitalists, or others of similar ilk. When reduced to the extent the author tries to bear down on in the book, everything - including one's tendency to persevere or work hard - is due to some or the other chance factors in one's gene or environment. Even if one stops before completely ruling out free will along these lines, it is easy to claim that nature plays a huge role in anyone's success, if not all the role.
The second point the book gets right is that those who are unlucky are punished excessively in our unequal world. We live in a world of insidious inequality that is getting worse and turning more entrenched. Our world's winners are racing away with more share of the world's riches and resources while the rest face ever diminishing prospects of breaking the rut.
The book throws no new light on inequality, even if its moral viewpoint that the unlucky, often branded as the ones without merit, do not need to be so disenfranchised is compassionately and convincingly well made. The solutions offered - through consumption-, wealth-, and financial transaction taxes - are neither original nor substantive. The wage subsidy arguments - mentioned in the briefest possible ways - are utopian in the way they are discussed. Any real-life practitioner would be able to elaborate why a minimum basic income will be far more practical than trying to decide the extent of subsidies for thousands of diverse types of jobs based on their arbitrarily decided societal value. Plus, a minimum income - not touched upon - will be moralistically more compatible with the chance factor arguments discussed by the author than having everyone disagreeing with everyone on which jobs are more or less important compared to the other and the extent of their importance/unimportance.
Simply put, in one fell swoop, the author discussed dismantling the market economy from all walks of life using examples of its failures but providing no objective evidence of how the scantily discussed, throwaway, proposed solutions would be better overall. One cannot destroy every human creation or societal construct by simply pointing to weaknesses. Far more, carefully prepared details must be offered on proposed alternatives than what the author does, especially when what one proposes involves something as radical as removing price signals.
The biggest issue with the book is how the author, who tries to be all-inclusive in providing the moral or philosophical base for his humanistic arguments, is wilfully blind to the role played by one's luck in where she is born. The author's inclusiveness is limited to those who have lagged in America. When the author abandons his philosophical musings and turns to politics, his rationale almost shifts zero-sum with little regard for those far poorer foreigners who lose out when the US turns more inward to protect its poor. There is nothing wrong with one taking a limited view in one's desire to reduce inequality only within a well-defined group of any kind, but such people should not try to theorize so much as the author does about the sacrifices more privileged must make for the less fortunate. The least unfortunate of the world are not the poorest of the richest countries.
The author is also wrong in dissing merit to the extent he does. Let's suppose there is a parallel world where tennis and sports have the meritocratically abused, elevated levels that the author sees so specifically in our society's math/science and education. Another author authoring a book on that society's inequality rightly starts by making the points on how the winners are luckier rather than being entirely on merit given that some of their natural gifts are just chance factors while a lot of their expensive training is due to their parents' affordability.
After rightly discussing the role of chance and correctly criticizing excessive prizes for winners versus the pittance for those behind or nothing for the folks unable to play tennis, the same author begins making political points in his book. Suppose he starts elaborating on a recent populist leader's success by endorsing the need to keep outside players out of the nation's tournaments to ensure that it is the best way to have citizens retain higher winnings and feel less unhappy. From there, while continuously mouthing those best sportspeople are more watchable and have more viewership, he begins discussing why sports competitions should have winners based on a lottery!
The logic, of course, would begin from the arguments that there is little that separate the top players, as is clearly evidenced in the fact that not the same player wins all the time. The author also points at the top performers' anxieties in staying at the top while the rest's frustrations at their inability to win as other reasons why such competitions should be banned at every level, starting from schools.
Returning to our world and the book, the lottery-based college admissions or arguments against exams are similar suggestions. The author's radical idea of making life more a lottery than it is as a solution is simply ridiculous. He may claim that he is suggesting this only for some walks of life, like in university admissions, but such wonkiness, if implemented, will have others suggesting doing away with all exams and using lottery in job selections, parental care, sports, or even politics. Once a society brays for an authority based on some philosophers' musing to roll the dice and pick winners arbitrarily as a way of life, a cultural revolution to obliterate any signs of individuality cannot be far away.
In the section on credentialism, the author bemoans how some implicitly or explicitly brag their better fortunes (in the form of university degrees or educational certificates in the author's examples) to the chagrin of others around. Once again, the example is not much different from winners pumping fists on a sports field or displaying their awards on their mantels. If every life activity's losers' feelings are used as a yardstick to dictate how everyone should behave, the resultant, joy-banning, totalitarian state will be more mechanistically socialistic than most left-leaning economists have ever asked for.
Humans create contests out of everything. From games of stones, chariots to beauty contests and money or computer games, we heave on emotions generated by them. One can list chance factors involved to any winner of any of these games while beseeching humility or the need to make the game fairer or asking for more just rewards, but to ask for a larger role of chance is a step in the backward direction.
So yes, the author should be credited to make the point that our societies need to spend far more time on those who are falling behind. We need to reduce the winners' winnings substantially and lift the rewards of the rest through more distributive policies. We must ensure that everyone knows that all who win have a lot to owe to Lady Luck. We must turn more decent and humane towards those who are not lucky rather than implicitly accept that the unfortunate must deserve what befell on them somehow. The author is not universal enough in applying his first principal-based humanitarian arguments, and his economic solutions do not follow the Hegelian self-actualization that he wants to help everyone achieve by making life a bigger game of dice.
The first thing the book gets entirely right, although perhaps to its consternation with no disagreement from anyone anywhere, is that the world is not a fair place. In many fields that people claim those with merits win are full of winners who happen to be at the right place at the right time or, much worse, with the winners emerging on top using unacceptable methods. Not only that those with merits do not always win, but many who have the merits - as the book wonderfully shows - acquire their merits due to chance factors. For example, some people are born with the right talents or background that help them be good at certain things. In a way, these are people with merits because they are lucky.
As important as the above points are, they are incontrovertible even in the eyes of extreme libertarians, conservatives, free-market proponents, capitalists, or others of similar ilk. When reduced to the extent the author tries to bear down on in the book, everything - including one's tendency to persevere or work hard - is due to some or the other chance factors in one's gene or environment. Even if one stops before completely ruling out free will along these lines, it is easy to claim that nature plays a huge role in anyone's success, if not all the role.
The second point the book gets right is that those who are unlucky are punished excessively in our unequal world. We live in a world of insidious inequality that is getting worse and turning more entrenched. Our world's winners are racing away with more share of the world's riches and resources while the rest face ever diminishing prospects of breaking the rut.
The book throws no new light on inequality, even if its moral viewpoint that the unlucky, often branded as the ones without merit, do not need to be so disenfranchised is compassionately and convincingly well made. The solutions offered - through consumption-, wealth-, and financial transaction taxes - are neither original nor substantive. The wage subsidy arguments - mentioned in the briefest possible ways - are utopian in the way they are discussed. Any real-life practitioner would be able to elaborate why a minimum basic income will be far more practical than trying to decide the extent of subsidies for thousands of diverse types of jobs based on their arbitrarily decided societal value. Plus, a minimum income - not touched upon - will be moralistically more compatible with the chance factor arguments discussed by the author than having everyone disagreeing with everyone on which jobs are more or less important compared to the other and the extent of their importance/unimportance.
Simply put, in one fell swoop, the author discussed dismantling the market economy from all walks of life using examples of its failures but providing no objective evidence of how the scantily discussed, throwaway, proposed solutions would be better overall. One cannot destroy every human creation or societal construct by simply pointing to weaknesses. Far more, carefully prepared details must be offered on proposed alternatives than what the author does, especially when what one proposes involves something as radical as removing price signals.
The biggest issue with the book is how the author, who tries to be all-inclusive in providing the moral or philosophical base for his humanistic arguments, is wilfully blind to the role played by one's luck in where she is born. The author's inclusiveness is limited to those who have lagged in America. When the author abandons his philosophical musings and turns to politics, his rationale almost shifts zero-sum with little regard for those far poorer foreigners who lose out when the US turns more inward to protect its poor. There is nothing wrong with one taking a limited view in one's desire to reduce inequality only within a well-defined group of any kind, but such people should not try to theorize so much as the author does about the sacrifices more privileged must make for the less fortunate. The least unfortunate of the world are not the poorest of the richest countries.
The author is also wrong in dissing merit to the extent he does. Let's suppose there is a parallel world where tennis and sports have the meritocratically abused, elevated levels that the author sees so specifically in our society's math/science and education. Another author authoring a book on that society's inequality rightly starts by making the points on how the winners are luckier rather than being entirely on merit given that some of their natural gifts are just chance factors while a lot of their expensive training is due to their parents' affordability.
After rightly discussing the role of chance and correctly criticizing excessive prizes for winners versus the pittance for those behind or nothing for the folks unable to play tennis, the same author begins making political points in his book. Suppose he starts elaborating on a recent populist leader's success by endorsing the need to keep outside players out of the nation's tournaments to ensure that it is the best way to have citizens retain higher winnings and feel less unhappy. From there, while continuously mouthing those best sportspeople are more watchable and have more viewership, he begins discussing why sports competitions should have winners based on a lottery!
The logic, of course, would begin from the arguments that there is little that separate the top players, as is clearly evidenced in the fact that not the same player wins all the time. The author also points at the top performers' anxieties in staying at the top while the rest's frustrations at their inability to win as other reasons why such competitions should be banned at every level, starting from schools.
Returning to our world and the book, the lottery-based college admissions or arguments against exams are similar suggestions. The author's radical idea of making life more a lottery than it is as a solution is simply ridiculous. He may claim that he is suggesting this only for some walks of life, like in university admissions, but such wonkiness, if implemented, will have others suggesting doing away with all exams and using lottery in job selections, parental care, sports, or even politics. Once a society brays for an authority based on some philosophers' musing to roll the dice and pick winners arbitrarily as a way of life, a cultural revolution to obliterate any signs of individuality cannot be far away.
In the section on credentialism, the author bemoans how some implicitly or explicitly brag their better fortunes (in the form of university degrees or educational certificates in the author's examples) to the chagrin of others around. Once again, the example is not much different from winners pumping fists on a sports field or displaying their awards on their mantels. If every life activity's losers' feelings are used as a yardstick to dictate how everyone should behave, the resultant, joy-banning, totalitarian state will be more mechanistically socialistic than most left-leaning economists have ever asked for.
Humans create contests out of everything. From games of stones, chariots to beauty contests and money or computer games, we heave on emotions generated by them. One can list chance factors involved to any winner of any of these games while beseeching humility or the need to make the game fairer or asking for more just rewards, but to ask for a larger role of chance is a step in the backward direction.
So yes, the author should be credited to make the point that our societies need to spend far more time on those who are falling behind. We need to reduce the winners' winnings substantially and lift the rewards of the rest through more distributive policies. We must ensure that everyone knows that all who win have a lot to owe to Lady Luck. We must turn more decent and humane towards those who are not lucky rather than implicitly accept that the unfortunate must deserve what befell on them somehow. The author is not universal enough in applying his first principal-based humanitarian arguments, and his economic solutions do not follow the Hegelian self-actualization that he wants to help everyone achieve by making life a bigger game of dice.
January 13, 2021
Sandel argues that the shift to a meritocratic system, which seemed so just in comparison to inherited rights or other ‘systems,’ in fact has two critical flaws in its implementation. First, particularly as seen in educational systems, it ignores the differential benefits of nurturing across environments that range from upper crust helicopter parenting to fend-for-yourself because your parents are working three jobs apiece to keep food on the table. That one is well known. I worked for the University of California for most of my career and while admissions processes tried to allow for these differences, age 18 is late in the game for making up ground.
The second problem is more subtle and more devastating. Reading this book during terrifying attempts to undo our election brought it home. Sandel provides a convincing portrayal of how the embrace of merit has told half the US population it has no value. That it’s too ‘stupid’ to know what the correct thing to do is.
When I was a too-smart young thing moving from a BA at a major public university to a PhD program at an Ivy, I had a discussion with my mother about NAFTA, just being implemented. She said, but what about all those people whose jobs will be lost? I had no patience. To me at the time, my mother seemed to lack all powers of analysis. But it’s better for all of us, I explained. They will go to work in a field where we have a competitive advantage and we will all be better off. My mother was unconvinced. My mother was right. Not ‘smart.’ Right. We didn’t do right by those people.
Sandel writes:
Not only that, those left out of the game recognize that the elites are committed to global profits, damn the consequences to their fellow (US) Americans. So Sandel then asks, what if the ideal of meritocracy is so flawed it can’t be fairly implemented “because helping people scramble up the ladder of success in a competitive meritocracy is a hollow political project that reflects an impoverished conception of citizenship and freedom?”
Sandel spends considerable time working through the various ideas of distributive justice (e. g. Hayek, Rawls), but concludes that there is no way to find a method of distributive justice that we can agree on. Next, he talks about the theories of work put forth by Hegel and Durkheim. He posits that “they did not see work mainly as a means to the end of consumption. Instead they argued that work, at its best, is a socially integrating activity, an arena of recognition, a way of honoring our obligation to contribute to the common good.”
Sandel says we need to turn to public policies that will offer dignified and valued work for all: contributive justice. People full of resentment need to feel that the work they do is truly seen and valued. This is tough, and I found the end of the book brief on the solution side. Non-college education is one idea he mentions: in 2014-2015, the US spent $162 billion on college grants, loans and tax credits, but only $1 billion on career and technical education. His analysis really focuses on ideas such as a wage subsidy, and a wide range of financial services changes. For example, remove the false ‘profits’ from non-productive speculation (e.g. derivatives) and other egregious 1% actions by ‘shift[ing] the tax burden from work to consumption and speculation. ‘ Bottom line: push hard that in the comparison of ‘makers’ and ‘takers,’ we change the definition of who is a maker and who is a taker.
The second problem is more subtle and more devastating. Reading this book during terrifying attempts to undo our election brought it home. Sandel provides a convincing portrayal of how the embrace of merit has told half the US population it has no value. That it’s too ‘stupid’ to know what the correct thing to do is.
As a measure of meritocracy’s hold on the public mind, the growing frequency of “smart” is less revealing that its changing meaning. Not only did “smart” refer to digital systems and devices; it increasingly became the general term of praise and a way of arguing for one policy rather than another. As an evaluative contrast, “smart versus dumb” began to displace ethical or ideological contrast, such as ‘just versus unjust” or “right versus wrong.” Both Clinton and Obama frequently argued that their favored policy was “not just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do.” This rhetorical tick suggested that, in a meritocratic age, being smart carried more persuasive heft than being right.
When I was a too-smart young thing moving from a BA at a major public university to a PhD program at an Ivy, I had a discussion with my mother about NAFTA, just being implemented. She said, but what about all those people whose jobs will be lost? I had no patience. To me at the time, my mother seemed to lack all powers of analysis. But it’s better for all of us, I explained. They will go to work in a field where we have a competitive advantage and we will all be better off. My mother was unconvinced. My mother was right. Not ‘smart.’ Right. We didn’t do right by those people.
Sandel writes:
Elites seemed oblivious not only to the partisan character of their “smart” policies, but also to the hubristic attitudes their persistent talk of “smart” and “dumb” expressed...By 2016, many working people chafed under the sense that well-schooled elites looked down on them with condescension...at a time when racism and sexism are out of favor (discredited though not eliminated), credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice. In the United States and Europe, disdain for the poorly educated is more pronounced, or at least more readily acknowledged, than prejudice against other disfavored groups.
Not only that, those left out of the game recognize that the elites are committed to global profits, damn the consequences to their fellow (US) Americans. So Sandel then asks, what if the ideal of meritocracy is so flawed it can’t be fairly implemented “because helping people scramble up the ladder of success in a competitive meritocracy is a hollow political project that reflects an impoverished conception of citizenship and freedom?”
Sandel spends considerable time working through the various ideas of distributive justice (e. g. Hayek, Rawls), but concludes that there is no way to find a method of distributive justice that we can agree on. Next, he talks about the theories of work put forth by Hegel and Durkheim. He posits that “they did not see work mainly as a means to the end of consumption. Instead they argued that work, at its best, is a socially integrating activity, an arena of recognition, a way of honoring our obligation to contribute to the common good.”
Sandel says we need to turn to public policies that will offer dignified and valued work for all: contributive justice. People full of resentment need to feel that the work they do is truly seen and valued. This is tough, and I found the end of the book brief on the solution side. Non-college education is one idea he mentions: in 2014-2015, the US spent $162 billion on college grants, loans and tax credits, but only $1 billion on career and technical education. His analysis really focuses on ideas such as a wage subsidy, and a wide range of financial services changes. For example, remove the false ‘profits’ from non-productive speculation (e.g. derivatives) and other egregious 1% actions by ‘shift[ing] the tax burden from work to consumption and speculation. ‘ Bottom line: push hard that in the comparison of ‘makers’ and ‘takers,’ we change the definition of who is a maker and who is a taker.
September 21, 2020
This is a wonderful example of accessible political philosophy writing -- Sandel's an incredibly clear writer and his ideas came through very effectively.
Pieces of this book were transcendent and really challenged my worldview. I'm ashamed to say I'd never given much explicit thought to the implications of national rhetoric and mythos centered around the ideals of meritocracy for those who wind up on the losing end. The strongest parts of the book trace the ways our emphasis on meritocracy devalues the lives and work of those whose skills aren't valued by the labor market for reasons outside their control. It also provided the first profound and new explanation for the rise of populism in recent years -- condescending to those who are struggling by emphasizing the importance of education just isn't helpful as politics or policy.
Further, Sandel makes a compelling argument on the downsides of meritocracy even for those who benefit from it because they have so much to lose. There's certainly an unhealthy anxiety embedded in our culture of prestige that I'm intimately familiar with.
There were a few places where I thought the arguments were weaker. In general, Sandel spends way too much time focusing on the undergraduate Ivy League experience -- this just isn't relevant for 99.9% of Americans. He pretty selectively included evidence on some of the economics research with which I was familiar and his arguments against technocracy were especially unconvincing (full disclosure: I am a technocrat): the argument effectively boiled down to the idea that the New Deal was executed without technocrats so how could they possibly be useful.
I also pretty fundamentally disagreed with Sandel's conclusions -- see Matt Yglesias' new book for a counterargument on why widely expanding protectionism and limited immigration would be a disaster for American standing in the world. It's also very difficult to engage with policy solutions from someone with so much disdain for incentives and market forces and policy expertise. It was pretty surprising for the book to close with consumption taxes and taxes on frequent trading as even partial solutions.
All that said, this was a book that made me question some of my core beliefs and fundamentally changed the way I will think about the rhetoric and politics of opportunity. Rounding 3.5 stars up to 4 since not many books leave this kind of impression.
Pieces of this book were transcendent and really challenged my worldview. I'm ashamed to say I'd never given much explicit thought to the implications of national rhetoric and mythos centered around the ideals of meritocracy for those who wind up on the losing end. The strongest parts of the book trace the ways our emphasis on meritocracy devalues the lives and work of those whose skills aren't valued by the labor market for reasons outside their control. It also provided the first profound and new explanation for the rise of populism in recent years -- condescending to those who are struggling by emphasizing the importance of education just isn't helpful as politics or policy.
Further, Sandel makes a compelling argument on the downsides of meritocracy even for those who benefit from it because they have so much to lose. There's certainly an unhealthy anxiety embedded in our culture of prestige that I'm intimately familiar with.
There were a few places where I thought the arguments were weaker. In general, Sandel spends way too much time focusing on the undergraduate Ivy League experience -- this just isn't relevant for 99.9% of Americans. He pretty selectively included evidence on some of the economics research with which I was familiar and his arguments against technocracy were especially unconvincing (full disclosure: I am a technocrat): the argument effectively boiled down to the idea that the New Deal was executed without technocrats so how could they possibly be useful.
I also pretty fundamentally disagreed with Sandel's conclusions -- see Matt Yglesias' new book for a counterargument on why widely expanding protectionism and limited immigration would be a disaster for American standing in the world. It's also very difficult to engage with policy solutions from someone with so much disdain for incentives and market forces and policy expertise. It was pretty surprising for the book to close with consumption taxes and taxes on frequent trading as even partial solutions.
All that said, this was a book that made me question some of my core beliefs and fundamentally changed the way I will think about the rhetoric and politics of opportunity. Rounding 3.5 stars up to 4 since not many books leave this kind of impression.
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