The Tyranny of Merit
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J Sandler
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Our society is underpinned by meritocratic views - where the winners believe they earn their success through their own talent and hard work.
But the idea you can 'make it if you try' denigrates losers in their own eyes. They feel their failure is their own doing, that they simply lack talent and a drive to succeed.
Therefore, this way of thinking is creating a political and societal divide, loosening social bonds and warping the idea of common good.
🎨 Impressions
This book covers an often untouched yet vital construct in society: meritocracy. It shares a detailed overview of the problem and logically breaks down the ideas surrounding it. In places, it is repetitive and hard to follow but overall the ideas are impactful and profound. This deeply opened my eyes up to a whole new layer underneath society that most of us are simply blind or unaware of that shapes our attitudes toward pretty much everything we do.
How I Discovered It
This book was recommended by Taimur from one of my favourite podcasts, Not Overthinking. This is a great podcast episode discussing it, and will likely make you want to read the book itself.
Who Should Read It?
If you are interested in equality, politics and general societal features. If you over-inflate the importance of college education and achievements this book will test you on your views. If you are interested in the ideas about a fair, level playing field and how this can be created there’s lots of insights.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.
If meritocracy is an aspiration, those who fall short can always blame the system; but if meritocracy is a fact, those who fall short are invited to blame themselves
The notion that “the best and the brightest” are better at governing than their less-credentialed fellow citizens is a myth born of meritocratic hubris.
📒 Summary + Notes
What is Meritocracy
Meritocracy is a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than wealth or social class. Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement.
Basically you create your own success and you are worthy of that success through your own doing. And that social class and background is irrelevant in deciding your fate.
Winners, Losers and Politics
Governments must ensure that everyone has an equal chance of success which in our globalised world means obtaining an education on which that success depends. If opportunities are truly equal than those who are left behind deserve their fate.
This way of thinking about success makes it hard to believe 'we are in this together.' It invites winners to consider their success their own doing and losers who are looked down upon from the top.
Those who celebrate the meritocratic ideal miss the moral unattractive ethic that it promotes. Among the winners it generates hubris and among the losers, humiliation and resentment.
The meritocratic faith also adds the idea that as your fate is in your hands, it can be inspiring but denigrates the losers even in their own eyes. It's hard to escape the demoralising thought that your failure is your own doing, that they simply lack talent and drive to succeed.
To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic striving on the social bonds that constitute our common life.
Hiring and Meritocracy
Hiring based on merit is fine. It is the right thing to do. Hiring a plumber to fix your toilet or a dentist to repair a tooth, you want to find the best person for the job. Someone well-qualified. You get a more efficient job and also fairness, as it would be wrong to discriminate against a less qualified candidate.
History of Meritocracy
The protestant work ethic gave rise to capitalism spirit and also promotes the ethic of self-help and responsibility for ones fate. It creates energetic striving and wealth but also a dark side of self-making.
The Rise of 'Smart'
There is an overwhelming increase of the word 'smart' to describe things. From US presidents to newspapers.
Smart became a general term of praise, a way of arguing for one policy against another.
An evaluative contract of 'smart versus dumb' began to replace ethical contrasts like 'just versus unjust' or 'right versus wrong.'
Clinton and Obama argued that it was the 'smart thing to do' not the 'right thing to do.' This suggested that being smart was better and carried more persuasive heft than being right.
The Problem of Educational Importance
With a rising single-minded focus on education as the answer to inequality (eg levelling the playing field by increasing access to college education) builds the idea that college is the definition of dignified worked and social esteem. This erodes democratic life. It devalues the contribution of those without college education, fuels prejudice against less-educated members of society and excludes working people from representative government and promotes political backlash.
Inequality
What matters for meritocracy is that everyone has an equal chance to climb the ladder of success, nothing to do with how far away the ladder rungs should be. Therefore the meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification fo inequality.
Market Value and Common Good
It is a mistake to assume that the market value of a certain job is a measure of its contribution to the common good. But the idea that money reflects the value of our social contribution is deeply embedded and echoed through public culture.
Concluding and Impactful Points
At a time when young people are relentlessly sorted, sifted, and ranked by schools, universities, and the workplace, neoliberal meritocracy places a strong need to strive, perform, and achieve at the centre of modern life. Success or failure at meeting the demand to achieve comes to define one's merit and self-worth.
Prosperous parents are able to give their kids a powerful boost in their bid for admission to elite colleges, but often at the cost of transforming their high school years into a high-stress, anxiety-ridden, sleep-deprived gauntlet of Advanced Placement courses, test-prep tutoring, sports training, dance and music lessons, and a myriad of extracurricular and public service activities,
