The Tyranny of Merit
What’s become of the common good?
Michael J. Sandel
Having read it
★★★★★
A good read that was elegantly broken up into neat sections and chapters that really helped you better approach and understand the positions, arguments and logical conclusions of the tyranny of merit. Given it helped explain, quite clearly, many underlying issues that seem to get hidden by the meritocratic approach we have in society, it is a read worth the time. It helps show that, yes, democracy can be a bit difficult at times (and that’s a productive thing) but, through legitimate and constructive debate and discussion by all in society, not just its elites, a common good can be better crafted and help society be a little less judging of those that can’t fit in to preconceived meritocratic expectations.
A good passage
The Protestant work ethic, then, not only gives rise to the spirit of capitalism. It also promotes an ethic of self-help and of responsibility for one’s fate congenial to meritocratic ways of thinking. This ethic unleashes a torrent of anxious, energetic striving that generates great wealth but at the same time reveals the dark side of responsibility and self-making. The humility prompted by helplessness in the face of grace gives way to the hubris prompted by belief in one’s own merit.
A second good passage
One of the failures of the well-credentialed meritocratic elites who have governed for the past four decades is that they have not done very well at putting questions such as these at the heart of political debate. Now, as we find ourselves wondering whether democratic norms will survive, complaints about the hubris of meritocratic elites and the narrowness of their technocratic vision may seem trifling. But theirs was the politics that led to this moment, that produced the discontent that populist authoritarians exploit. Facing up to the failures of meritocracy and technocracy is an indispensable step toward addressing that discontent and reimagining a politics of the common good.
A third good passage
Any serious response to working-class frustrations must combat the elite condescension and credentialist prejudice that have become rife in the public culture. It must also put the dignity of work at the centre of the political agenda. This is not as easy as it may seem. People of various ideological persuasions will hold competing notions about what it means for a society to respect the dignity of work, especially at a time when globalisation and technology, with their seemingly inevitable bent, threaten to undermine it. But the way a society honours and rewards work is central to the way it defines the common good. Thinking through the meaning of work would force us to confront moral and political questions we otherwise evade, but that lurk, unaddressed, beneath the surface of our present discontent: What counts as a valuable contribution to the common good, and what do we owe one another as citizens?