The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?
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.
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Community Reviews
Sandel writes a definitive Aristotelian critique of neoliberalism that is fun, accessible, and compelling.
The book has flaws, namely (1) a myopic view of meritocracy and professions after the academy, where the author is so comfortable; (2) a failure to engage with economics and understand the trade offs we might make if we depart from a function that involves optimizing gdp (the author seems to think we would lose only our chains!); (3) a sort of dilettante’s travelogue through the greatest hits of sociology, which doesn’t quite hang.
None of this detracts from Sandel’s core achievement: he drops the scales from our eyes and allows us to view meritocratic systems for what they have always been: brutal competitive arenas in which the powerful few demean the struggling many with no regard for a common enterprise, values or even state. These elites use this position of power to further transform the world to their own benefit.
I will expand the authors arguments and my critiques below:
The compelling core argument:
a) people care about how they spend their lives and prefer to live lives of dignity, in fact this need supersedes most others.
b) modern meritocracies ruthlessly sort people based on narrow criteria characteristic of the academy (and sorts everyone the same way, when we might need some diversity of skills);
c) those who win become wealthy, isolated, egotistic and fail to see why they have a duty to their community while those who lose become bereft of meaning and place within a harsh economy,
d) this leaves American democracy in a strange place, since it seems obvious one cannot have an economic system in a democracy that leaves more than half the population deprived of esteem (regardless the economic benefit)
e) moreover, when we imposed a meritocracy on our economic and social order that decision required a value judgment ‘this is what counts as worth striving for’
f) but ruling elites have used the seeming objectiveness of neoliberal economics to hide this value judgment, which ought to be open for continuous debate, and instead cudgel most of society into submission while enriching themselves leaving us ripe for
g) some sort of populist reaction against the globalized, competitive economy of the late 20th century and its underlying values
h) the only question now: what replaces it? Trumpism? Sandels book makes the argument for another alternative that values dignity of workers, openly debates values, and sloughs off the oppressive constraints of globalized free trade.
However, around that core argument Sandel has (what I take to be) serious flaws stemming from over reach, particularly:
1) the author spends too much time talking about the academic sorting mechanism without attending to how professions really work. Sandel positions elite colleges as providing the essentially sorting function that makes modern meritocracy possible. His argument is two fold: 1) these universities establish a culture of mercenary achievement at all costs. That culture has impoverished life and communal values and 2) these universities really do pick the winners and losers that govern society. Professionals who have lived a bit out in the world will find the first point profound and unsettling but the second point a bit off. Why is that? Well, most professionals realize that power does not lie in the universities but in the professions and the professions - while chalked full of university graduates - function quite differently than universities and are dramatically better suited to deploy their considerable power in a market economy.
Sandel bemoans the alienated feeling an adult without a college degree feels, but it is not the mere lack of a degree that makes this existence seem hopeless, after all tech companies have fetishized the degree-less programmer. The despair sets in when a degree less but ambitious adult sets about in the world but finds himself beset by lawyers whose incantations control how companies operate and property is divided, by doctors whose complex systems decide life and death but are impenetrable to most, by accountants and tax attorneys whose complex formula determine what portion of ones earnings one keeps, by engineers, scientists and planners whose mastery of complex building codes and environmental policy determines what gets built and what does not. And while these cabals yield their power to the networked, connected graduates who can speak their language and display the appropriate signs, they are mercilessly dismissive of the uninitiated.
I believe Sandel should address this second act of meritocracy, so much more tragic than the first (university) in a revised volume.
2) the author spends too little time engaging with economics and too much time attacking a straw man version of it. An example: the author argues forcefully and repeatedly that Obama should not have bailed out banks and ought to have punished bankers for the GFC. But he never bothers to specify how that would have worked or what would have happened to the economy without a bailout. Not once does Sandel address whether bank failures and breadlines are a fair price to pay for his communitarian ideals. For a philosopher this is fine, he is expanding concepts which must be translated practically by different people. But Sandel plants himself squarely in the camp of practical policy advisors throughout the book. A policy advocate, which I believe Sandel wishes to be, cannot omit the cost portion of a cost benefit analysis and cannot ignore the existence and potential wisdom of competing policies.
His unwillingness to contend with trade offs for his prescriptions is DANGEROUS for someone preferring policy suggestions and MUST be addressed in future volumes and by contending with real experts who hold disparate views.
3) the author veers from his home court (philosophy) into sociology, propagating a version of the Weber thesis to explain the emergence of capitalism. But he doesn’t engage with the limitations of these concepts from sociology. For instance, he doesn’t seem to care why capitalism showed up in so many places that don’t have Christianity but with so many of the values he thinks came from Protestant striving. Look I love sociology and I think Weber is super fun. But Sandel’s focus is elsewhere (philosophy and policy) and I do not see the point of bringing in assorted topics from sociology if he does not have time to treat them fully and address their limitations and attendant conversations.
An absolutely electric book with towering strengths that more than offset a few quibbles and oversights.
Five stars.
The book has flaws, namely (1) a myopic view of meritocracy and professions after the academy, where the author is so comfortable; (2) a failure to engage with economics and understand the trade offs we might make if we depart from a function that involves optimizing gdp (the author seems to think we would lose only our chains!); (3) a sort of dilettante’s travelogue through the greatest hits of sociology, which doesn’t quite hang.
None of this detracts from Sandel’s core achievement: he drops the scales from our eyes and allows us to view meritocratic systems for what they have always been: brutal competitive arenas in which the powerful few demean the struggling many with no regard for a common enterprise, values or even state. These elites use this position of power to further transform the world to their own benefit.
I will expand the authors arguments and my critiques below:
The compelling core argument:
a) people care about how they spend their lives and prefer to live lives of dignity, in fact this need supersedes most others.
b) modern meritocracies ruthlessly sort people based on narrow criteria characteristic of the academy (and sorts everyone the same way, when we might need some diversity of skills);
c) those who win become wealthy, isolated, egotistic and fail to see why they have a duty to their community while those who lose become bereft of meaning and place within a harsh economy,
d) this leaves American democracy in a strange place, since it seems obvious one cannot have an economic system in a democracy that leaves more than half the population deprived of esteem (regardless the economic benefit)
e) moreover, when we imposed a meritocracy on our economic and social order that decision required a value judgment ‘this is what counts as worth striving for’
f) but ruling elites have used the seeming objectiveness of neoliberal economics to hide this value judgment, which ought to be open for continuous debate, and instead cudgel most of society into submission while enriching themselves leaving us ripe for
g) some sort of populist reaction against the globalized, competitive economy of the late 20th century and its underlying values
h) the only question now: what replaces it? Trumpism? Sandels book makes the argument for another alternative that values dignity of workers, openly debates values, and sloughs off the oppressive constraints of globalized free trade.
However, around that core argument Sandel has (what I take to be) serious flaws stemming from over reach, particularly:
1) the author spends too much time talking about the academic sorting mechanism without attending to how professions really work. Sandel positions elite colleges as providing the essentially sorting function that makes modern meritocracy possible. His argument is two fold: 1) these universities establish a culture of mercenary achievement at all costs. That culture has impoverished life and communal values and 2) these universities really do pick the winners and losers that govern society. Professionals who have lived a bit out in the world will find the first point profound and unsettling but the second point a bit off. Why is that? Well, most professionals realize that power does not lie in the universities but in the professions and the professions - while chalked full of university graduates - function quite differently than universities and are dramatically better suited to deploy their considerable power in a market economy.
Sandel bemoans the alienated feeling an adult without a college degree feels, but it is not the mere lack of a degree that makes this existence seem hopeless, after all tech companies have fetishized the degree-less programmer. The despair sets in when a degree less but ambitious adult sets about in the world but finds himself beset by lawyers whose incantations control how companies operate and property is divided, by doctors whose complex systems decide life and death but are impenetrable to most, by accountants and tax attorneys whose complex formula determine what portion of ones earnings one keeps, by engineers, scientists and planners whose mastery of complex building codes and environmental policy determines what gets built and what does not. And while these cabals yield their power to the networked, connected graduates who can speak their language and display the appropriate signs, they are mercilessly dismissive of the uninitiated.
I believe Sandel should address this second act of meritocracy, so much more tragic than the first (university) in a revised volume.
2) the author spends too little time engaging with economics and too much time attacking a straw man version of it. An example: the author argues forcefully and repeatedly that Obama should not have bailed out banks and ought to have punished bankers for the GFC. But he never bothers to specify how that would have worked or what would have happened to the economy without a bailout. Not once does Sandel address whether bank failures and breadlines are a fair price to pay for his communitarian ideals. For a philosopher this is fine, he is expanding concepts which must be translated practically by different people. But Sandel plants himself squarely in the camp of practical policy advisors throughout the book. A policy advocate, which I believe Sandel wishes to be, cannot omit the cost portion of a cost benefit analysis and cannot ignore the existence and potential wisdom of competing policies.
His unwillingness to contend with trade offs for his prescriptions is DANGEROUS for someone preferring policy suggestions and MUST be addressed in future volumes and by contending with real experts who hold disparate views.
3) the author veers from his home court (philosophy) into sociology, propagating a version of the Weber thesis to explain the emergence of capitalism. But he doesn’t engage with the limitations of these concepts from sociology. For instance, he doesn’t seem to care why capitalism showed up in so many places that don’t have Christianity but with so many of the values he thinks came from Protestant striving. Look I love sociology and I think Weber is super fun. But Sandel’s focus is elsewhere (philosophy and policy) and I do not see the point of bringing in assorted topics from sociology if he does not have time to treat them fully and address their limitations and attendant conversations.
An absolutely electric book with towering strengths that more than offset a few quibbles and oversights.
Five stars.
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