The Tyranny of Merit

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.

I tried my best to read it without losing hope that it will land into something… chapter after chapter the author creates a narrative that Meritocracy is good as an ideal but terrible in nature for the ones that fail to achieve.

That basic polarization of them be us, by stating the obvious and focusing on USA as the victim of globalization.

No much more than that, some rescuable phrases and references worth reading at best.

I hope for more authors to share their work on this important topic and dare to explore deeper thoughts, that this book felt short in its attempt

Good luck, if you decide to read this book for sure you are looking for far more than it can offer.

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.