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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Place and Importance of Education

While the main objective of The Tyranny of Merit is to outline the main issues with a meritocratic culture and society, one of the principal antagonists is the current system of higher education. The paradox of the situation is that meritocracy conceives of education as being of the utmost importance—a sentiment with which the author broadly agrees—but that it is precisely the education system that needs to be radically overhauled. The very system that the modern meritocratic regime championed in the institutions of higher education is the system by which meritocracy has most manifestly eroded and destroyed the ideals to which it aspires.

The goal of the meritocracy is to improve access to higher education in order to produce consumers and creators that can participate in the global economy: “If equality of opportunity was the primary moral and political project, expanding access to higher education was the overriding policy imperative” (87). The problem is that the excessive value of an education that was founded to find and propagate the best and brightest minds has become so coveted that people are willing to game the system, gaining access to the educational system and subsequent credentials in nefarious ways. Thus, colleges and institutions that were meant to find and educate those most worthy and capable are now rife with participants who have lied, cheated, or bought their way in. The most recent evidence of this problem is the university scandal of 2019, where dozens of famous individuals and families bribed their way into getting their children admitted as students at prestigious colleges around the country.

Solving the problem of education does not lie in pretending that it does not matter and doing away with it. Far from it, as Sandel notes: “Improving educational opportunities for poor but gifted students is an unqualified good” (170, emphasis added). Instead, the key is to find ways to level the playing field and renew the manner in which a college education is geared toward the good of the individuals and the community. Education needs to be truly education, and not a white-washed mode of buying the credentials necessary to participate in the technocratic, globalized economy, without which one can hope only to just barely get by in life.

Additionally, the meaning and definition of education need to expand beyond just that of four-year college degrees: “Learning to become a plumber or electrician or dental hygienist should be respected as a valuable contribution to the common good, not regarded as a consolation prize for those who lack the SAT scores or financial means to make it to the Ivy League” (191). Building a society that flourishes and allows the greatest number of people to live dignified lives that contribute to the common good means acknowledging the central importance of education. Above all, it also means acknowledging the qualified good that lies in providing structures for every individual—regardless of education—to live a good and noble life.

The Dignity of Work

Related to the issue of education are the questions of what kind of work is valuable and what kind of work is to be valued and rewarded. Sandel demonstrates the reality that many kinds of work are devalued on account of them being the kind of work that can be accomplished without a college degree. The scandal of this manner of thinking was revealed, Sandel points out, during the various lockdowns caused by the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Those who continued to work were considered to be “essential workers” in essential industries, but they were almost exclusively those industries outside the world of white-collar work: shopkeepers, ambulance drivers, workers in the sanitation industry, among countless others.

The problem of viewing all manner of work with dignity is not a problem caused by changing morals or shifting popular sentiment, but a problem created from the top down: “The diminished economic and cultural status of working people in recent decades is not the result of inexorable forces; it is the result of the way mainstream political parties and elites have governed” (19, emphasis added). Those in power have achieved their political and economic position through a very narrow kind of education and career trajectory, and have demonstrated either disdain for work they consider beneath them, or naivety regarding the manner of work that the average person does in order to support themselves and their family.

Since the current technocratic economy rewards particular lines of work and fails to reward others, those without the academic credentials that allow access to those jobs of the top 1% are made to feel as though they are making “a lesser contribution to the common good” (198). For society to be truly healthy, this absolutely needs to change. A society that recognizes the intrinsic dignity of all work is one that will find a way to reward work both financially and with honor: It will be one that “publicly recognizes each person’s work as a contribution to the common good” (211). Human beings are creatures that naturally want to live in a community and contribute to the good of that human community, be it a family or a neighborhood, or even more widely, a city or country. Certain jobs may never be valued economically in a way that perhaps they should be (e.g., schoolteachers or nurses), but regardless of the financial remuneration involved, each instance of valuable work that contributes to the common good should be looked on as honorable and worthy of respect.

The Illusion of Merit and Self-Determination

A system governed by meritocratic principles is one that defines itself by allowing talent, drive, and hard work to be the primary causes of success. Basing rewards on merit is viewed as the fairest method of determining who is given more and who is given less. Regardless of whether or not everyone possesses equal wealth, the American mindset has been one of tolerating inequality based on the fact that America allows, in theory, equal access to opportunity—in other words, the idea that anyone can succeed as long as they work hard enough. As Sandel writes, “This faith in the possibility of upward mobility is at the heart of the American dream” (22).

Unfortunately, this possibility of upward mobility has become an illusory achievement that denies the experience of too many in reality. It is no longer possible for the average person to simply make it by effort alone: “The ability to rise, it seems, depends less on the spur of poverty than on access to education, health care, and other resources that equip people to succeed in the world of work” (23). What is more, the core principle of meritocracy is success due to one’s own talent and effort. The problem with this belief is that, in many cases, there is simply no such thing as one’s “own” talent and effort: “Central to the case for the meritocratic ethic is the idea that we do not deserve to be rewarded, or held back, based on factors beyond our control. But is having (or lacking) certain talents really our own doing?” (24). Meritocracy rewards talent, but talent and skill are distributed purely by chance or luck—it has nothing to do with one’s own free choice.

What is more, what a society values and is willing to pay for is also outside one’s control as well. Sandel uses the example of elite athletes to illustrate his point: We happen to live in a time, place, and culture that highly values the talents of elite-level athletes and is willing to compensate them for this:

LeBron James makes tens of millions of dollars playing basketball […] [but] he is lucky to live in a society that values and rewards [this]. It is not his doing that he lives today, when people love the game at which he excels, rather than in Renaissance Florence (123).

There and then, it was not athletes that were able to make a lavish living, but professional painters and artists of other skills. Any critique of meritocracy will need to contend with the fact that even the ideal of succeeding on account of talent and effort is still largely determined by chance and particular circumstances; individuals are far less capable of self-determination than it may seem at first glance, and thus the pursuit of equality and the common good needs to take this reality into consideration.