Job Search Scrap Trading Books News Scholarship Website
The Tyranny of Merit - Michael J. Sandel

The Tyranny of Merit

By Michael J. Sandel

  • Release Date: 2020-09-15
  • Genre: Political Science
Score: 4
4
From 63 Ratings

Description

A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020
A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020
A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020
A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020

The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has 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 favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.

World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. 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 solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Reviews

  • A miss

    2
    By Shanin Specter
    The book is a miss. That’s too bad as I have great respect for Mr. Sandel’s brilliance. His book “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do” is a masterpiece. Sandel is a philosopher, not a political scientist, and it shows in the details of the book. He says over and over again that low income people resent rich people because they reject the idea of meritocracy. That’s wrong for many reasons. First, most people don’t know what the word meritocracy means. Second his conclusion is guesswork, with no data to back it up. The little data he cites is unsupportive. Third, his language based argument that presidential phrases like “on the right side of history” and “smart policy” aid his viewpoint is thoroughly unsupported. Those phrases are politically and philosophically neutral rhetoric, nothing more. Fourth, there are more logical explanations for the divergence between haves and have nots: worsening wealth inequality, tax dollars misspent on undeserving folks, exportation of jobs — the latter two of which he learned from reading the work of political and social scientists — and the polarized media. People with low incomes and no college degrees don’t resent CEO’s because CEO’s have college degrees. People with low income reject— as do I — the inflation of the income ratio of CEO’s of the top 350 companies to the typical non supervisory worker went from 20:1 in 1965 to 278:1 in 2018 and the fact that the median income of male American workers has been stagnant for 50 years, which he casually mentions toward the end of the book and then ignores. Bottom 50 percent resentment is fed by our polarized media which serves up a daily dish of half-truths grievances, like whether the Cat in the Hat is being banned. Moreover, while a meritocracy has problems, it’s like what Churchill said about democracy, it’s the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried from time to time. It surely is true that for some people, failure is demoralizing. So what? That’s probably mostly good. A society where every adult gets the equivalent of a little league trophy whether they finish first or last disincentivizes hard work and cheapens achievement. Sorting is part of life, whether as Janice Ian wrote we are choosing sides for basketball or as I have learned, grading law school papers. Having evaluated thousands of law students and young lawyers over 22 years of teaching and 37 years of practice, I know that academic success and standardized exam scores are a rough predictor of professional success. We need to defend that because rewarding professional excellence in every vocation is vital to all of us. We need excellent lawyers not mediocre lawyers, excellent doctors not mediocre doctors, etc. And it is of course not just ironic but telling the Sandel teaches at Harvard. If he wanted to make a more substantial contribution he would not be teaching at first tier school, as I’ve learned dramatically by teaching at UC Hastings. But instead, his career smacks of do as I say not as I do. He offers little in the way of suggestion. He notes Romney aid Oren Cass’s suggestion for a wage supplement program. He apparently doesn’t know that was first proposed by his hero Robert Kennedy. Aside from that, his only proposal is to more heavily tax those who make money manipulating money. Yawn. That’s not going to create more harmony. The answers lie in bringing blue collar wages up through as an increase in the minimum wage, a lower ratio to CEO salaries, changes to voting laws to encourage candidates to appeal to the center, valuing of independent voices in the news media and greater efforts at bipartisanship In Washington and across the states.
  • The Tyranny of Merit

    5
    By MickerBarn
    Meritocracy is imbedded in our society and this book makes a thinking-person’s strong case for questioning this almost blind acceptance of it. If the universal truth of the Golden Rule is a given, then we must seek to accommodate it in all of our practices. Sandel helps us realize that it is entirely within our capability to do so. It is as simple as that. I hope this becomes easier to communicate over time, the sooner the better. This whole dilemma exists within my own family circle. It is not far fetched.

Comments