The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

“Our public debates are not about meritocracy itself but about how to achieve it.”

One of the fundamental tenets of the book is to question the entire concept of meritocracy. Contemporary discussions simply assume that it is an unqualified good but, Sandel argues, that is an assumption that belies the reality experienced by tens of millions of people in their everyday lives. Rather than make an assumption, the question should go back to the very root of the system itself.

“For the more we think of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.”

The common good is such an essential aspect of public life, that anything that damages that good should be seen as suspect and fought against. If meritocracy serves to make people more selfish, and serves to delude them into thinking they are self-sufficient monads who have achieved success apart from any other help or assisting structures, then it needs to be either rejected or severely qualified.

“Construing populist protest as either malevolent or misdirected absolves governing elites of responsibility for creating the conditions that have eroded the dignity of work and left many feeling disrespected and disempowered.”

Sandel points out how it is far easier to create caricatures out of various positions and viewpoints than it is to deal honestly with them. Those in power have a vested interest in making everything seem black-and-white and fostering discontent among the lower classes; rather than write off populist discontent as superficial and problematic, the roots of this feeling should be investigated and taken seriously as expressing real problems.

“Americans have long tolerated inequalities of income and wealth, believing that, whatever one’s starting point in life, it is possible to rise from rags to riches. This faith in the possibility of upward mobility is at the heart of the American dream.”

The American dream—the idea that anyone can come from anywhere and build themselves a successful life—is one that allows temporary tolerance of inequalities. This tolerance is not thanks to the opinion that inequality is somehow good, but thanks to the hope and confidence that inequality is intrinsically something that can be escaped and conquered as long as the right education, hard work, and goodwill is put into a project. Sandel argues throughout The Tyranny of Merit that such upward social mobility has become illusory for millions.

“[A] perfect meritocracy banishes all sense of gift or grace. It diminishes our capacity to see ourselves as sharing a common fate. It leaves little room for the solidarity that can arise when we reflect on the contingency of our talents and fortunes. This is what makes merit a kind of tyranny, or unjust rule.”

Meritocracy destroys goodwill because it places the entire onus of success on the individual. It separates individuals and writes off the poor and those who have failed as personally responsible for their failure. Merit fails to serve as a truly good system of living because it erases the ability to see life as a gift, making individuals reluctant to acknowledge the role of luck or any help they received toward their success. By contrast, humility and solidarity between individuals pushes out the notion of self-manufactured success.

“To speak of one’s ‘lot’ suggests the drawing of lots, a result determined by fate, fortune, or divine providence, not our own effort […] This reminds us that the most consequential early debates about merit were not about income and jobs but about God’s favor: Is it something we earn or receive as a gift?”

Even colloquial manners of speaking assume the fact that certain things are simply the way they are regardless of personal choice or freewill. Recognizing that there are some things—many things, in fact—that lie outside our personal control is the first step in acknowledging the cracks in the foundation of the meritocracy. Many things are received as gifts that we have not earned or created—a reality that meritocracy serves to obscure.

“Today’s secular meritocratic order moralizes success in ways that echo an earlier providential faith: Although the successful do not owe their power and wealth to divine intervention—they rise thanks to their own effort and hard work—their success reflects their superior virtue.”

Meritocracy and the worldview that takes divine providence seriously find opposite ways to arrive at the same conclusion. While the meritocracy would deny any governing role to divine providence, preferring to see all as the result of human free choice and chance, it nevertheless arrives at the same conclusion: Success is thanks to virtue and moral superiority. The two systems simply attribute moral rectitude and happiness to different sources, but they are not fundamentally different in terms of their relation to human activity.

“The rhetoric of responsibility and the rhetoric of rising had this in common: both gestured toward the ideal of self-reliance and self-making […] If opportunities were equal, people would rise based on their efforts and talents, and their success would be the measure of their merit.”

Merit is assumed to naturally lead to rising levels of success. The language developed to push the system of merit is referred to as “the rhetoric of rising” and responsibility, which links success to personal commitment and work-ethic. This in turn serves to link the existence of the meritocracy to the idea of equality; thus, if judgment and success are the result of rewarding merit alone, then equality necessarily follows, as it is the means by which the meritocracy functions.

“The majority of Americans (57 percent) disagree with the statement ‘success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control.’ By contrast, majorities in most other countries, including most European countries, view success as determined mainly by forces outside our control.”

It is an American presumption to think that we are in control of our life—a viewpoint that goes hand-in-hand with the idea that America is a meritocracy, and that this is the best manner of conducting business and public affairs. This is in stark contrast to other countries and national communities, who are far more willing to admit that life is not fully under an individual’s control.

“The American dream is also flourishing in Beijing.”

Ironically, the birthplace of the American dream—America, obviously—is not where this ideology is most present in the 21st century. America is no longer the place where equality of opportunity, and hope for a better future, are naturally at home, both in reality and in public opinion. In pointing to Beijing as America’s rival, Sandel suggests that the same flawed systems of supposed merit and rising inequality are also being replicated in other rising powers, suggesting the globalized influence of American meritocracy.

“This tendency to move from fact to hope and back again is not a slip of the tongue or philosophical confusion but a characteristic feature of political rhetoric […] 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.”

Whether meritocracy is an aspiration or a fact is a matter of dispute; is this an aspirational hope and desire, or is it something that is actually an act that serves the common person in their everyday life? This is a real question. However, in political debate, the distinction is often made purposefully vague for rhetorical reasons, to avoid the backlash that would come if a politician were to come down on one side of the fence. It is more expedient, politically-speaking, to blur the lines between hope and reality.

“The global economy, as if a fact of nature, had somehow come upon us and was here to stay. The central political question was not how to reconfigure it but how to adapt to it.”

As with the discussion of meritocracy as a whole, acceptance of a global economy has not really been put on trial. It is a fact in how the world has progressed, but whether that is a good thing has simply been assumed. This is a natural aspect of a worldview that progress is always good, and that progress always occurs, but this is an assumption and not a hard fact. It is not always the case that progression in time brings with it progression of the good.

“[H]istory shows little connection between prestigious academic credentials and either practical wisdom or an instinct for the common good in the here and now.”

Modern society has equivocated in its perspective on education. Ancient philosophy made clear distinctions between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is the attainment of facts, whether or not they are related, but wisdom is a habit of the mind that allows one to see the connections between things and to set them in order. Politicians are meant to be wise, but the system of higher education is a guarantee merely of gaining knowledge. In many ways, Sandel argues, wisdom and virtue are enemies of the meritocracy and the system of higher education that flourishes in such a society.

“The appeal of the technocratic position, but also its weakness, is its seemingly frictionless value neutrality.”

Modern culture has glorified neutrality, arguing that moral neutrality is the only way to allow for a diverse society that encompasses endless numbers of people who disagree about the most important things (e.g., religion, politics, philosophy, ethics, etc.). Neutrality, however, allows for a cold and calculating technocratic process to do the sorting and decision making for a community. The problem with this, argues the author, is that communities are human, and thus a technocratic mode of governance and order is fundamentally at odds with the common good of a human society.

“Most of our debates about access to jobs, education, and public office proceed from the premise of equal opportunity. Our disagreements are less about the principle itself than about what it requires.”

Fortunately, we live in a world where equal opportunity is recognized as an intrinsically good thing to have and strive for. The problem, as with anything universally agreed upon, is precisely how to achieve that good end. This is the nature of the debate over equality, but it is not the nature of the debate over meritocracy. Sandel suggests that in taking meritocracy as an assumed premise, we miss the opportunity to question the system itself, instead focusing only on how it is implemented.

“[T]he recognition that our talents are not our own doing complicates this picture of self-making. It puts in doubt the meritocratic faith that overcoming prejudice and privilege is sufficient to bring about a just society.”

Meritocracy strives desperately to make people think of themselves as separated and divided off from all others. Only in such a system could people be convinced that it is their won merit, apart from any help or assistance, that causes their success (or conversely, their failure). This is simply not true, however, for nobody is an island, and we all need the help, assistance, and goodwill of others. At the heart of Sandel’s critique is the assertion that we are all in need of help, and that we all receive just as much as we give.

“Morally and psychologically, the distinction between merit and value becomes vanishingly thin.”

Theoretically, merit and value are distinct concepts. Merit speaks to what is deserved, while value speaks to what others are willing to give in return for a good or service provided (i.e., what is created thanks to one’s merit). Here we see the difference in what one might deserve as a morally upstanding human being, and what one is able to achieve financially in the economic realm. In practice, however, the concepts are treated as essentially equal thanks to meritocratic capitalism: Society is forced into thinking that what creates the most value must actually be most worthy (i.e., meritorious).

“While it may be true that the achievements of geniuses such as Einstein or virtuosos such as Mozart are the result of innate gifts, it is absurd to think that such surpassing natural genius is what separates hedge fund managers from high school teachers.”

The critique of meritocracy does not rule out certain cases whereby individuals do, in fact, possess natural gifts that simply do not exist anywhere else or within anyone else. This is not the case with the majority of cases, however, and the economic remuneration assigned to particular industries in comparison to others—here, the comparison is between teachers and wall street bankers—is not evidence of a moral distinction between the two. In this passage, Sandel’s distinction between merit and value is starkly obvious.

“Unlike previous societies, which were run by the few and could therefore afford to squander talent, a modern technological society governed by complex organizations needed to mount a relentless search for talent, to seek it out wherever it was to be found.”

In previous generations, success was possible for only a small few thanks to the nature of society and culture. In today’s global culture, however, there are far more “complex organizations” that need a much higher number of people to function properly. For this reason, societal desire for as many of the best and brightest is understandable. In such a system, the need for an endless stream of talent is necessary, making the discovery and cultivation of such talent—real or imagined—a necessity for the meritocratic regime.

“Years of anxious striving leave young people with a fragile sense of self-worth, contingent on achievement and vulnerable to the exacting judgments of parents, teachers, admissions committees, and ultimately, themselves.”

Meritocracy is not just a problem for those who have entered the workforce and are attempting to build a life as a member of the working community. The worship of merit bleeds backward even into childhood aspiration, thanks to the decreasing possibility of the average person to be admitted to the best colleges. The cultivation of a highly-competitive society and system of industry has caused the educational system at almost every level to become similarly competitive and high-stress.

“Work is both economic and cultural. It is a way of making a living and also a source of social recognition and esteem.”

Technocratic meritocracy assumes that work is simply a means to a financial end. This destroys the human aspect of work and The Dignity of Work. Sandel argues that work is an essential aspect of human self-understanding, and should provide an unassailable dignity to what it means to live and flourish as a human being regardless of one’s salary or educational background.

“The notion that economic policy is ultimately for the sake of consumption is today so familiar that it is hard to think our way beyond it.”

Technocratic meritocracy forces a perspective of work and life that is inherently consumeristic. When combined with modern, unfettered capitalism, it is the very air that citizens of modern Western society breathe. Sandel points out that this is problematic at every level, and a complete overhaul of the economic system needs to be implemented if society is to change course towards a more human-scaled financial, political, and cultural mode of activity.

“[W]e cannot determine what counts as a contribution worth affirming without reasoning together about the purposes and ends of the common life we share.”

When there is profound disagreement about what the purpose of life actually is, then it makes perfect sense why there would be such disagreement and contradiction about what it takes to achieve that end. Sandel believes that what is needed is a philosophical reevaluation of what it means to live a life in common, and what it means to define and work for the common good of a particular community or society.