Tyranny of Merit review
Tyranny of Merit By Michael Sandel Review
Hello! Welcome to another review! This book looks at the concept of a meritocracy, claiming that regardless of its implementation, a meritocracy is implicitly flawed. Sandel goes through many ideas, including social esteem, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and many more. For this review, I will rank this book on 4 criteria: Writing style, content, difficulty, and my subjective rating overall. They will be ranked on a scale of 1-5. I'll review each chapter and give my thoughts, ending with a final review and a score! I hope you enjoy it!!
Overview
Introduction: Getting In
Thoughts: This section sets out to introduce the themes of the book. It starts by looking at the college admissions scams run by William Singer in 2019. By utilizing his unique methods, one could get their child into an Ivy League college without sacrificing their perception of merit. He goes over many ideas in the introduction but they all lead to this basic concept. Our ideas around meritocracy have not been examined enough. The introduction describes all the ways we may not think about merits’ role in society and how we may be wrong on all of it. Overall, a good intro and including real-world examples do a good job of situating the issue in a way that immediately makes me care.
Chapter 1: Winners and Losers
Thoughts: This section serves as a further introduction to the book’s main concepts and its central argument. Overall this chapter does a good job of contextualizing all the sentiments in modern history. He gives plenty of examples on both sides of the aisle to showcase exactly what he’s saying. You get a pretty precise feel for what sentiment he’s talking about with this approach. The only drawback I see is that some words, like technocratic, populist, or globalization, are terms not used by the average reader, and without defining them, one can get lost very easily. However, I don’t know if he’s aiming for a more intellectual reader or an everyday one.
Chapter 2: Great Because Good- a Brief Moral History on Merit
This chapter goes into the relationship of merit and how it progressed in society, starting with the tying of the Protestant work ethic to what Sandel describes as the provincialism of America.
Thoughts: Overall, I think this chapter is packed with a lot of information and it delivers it with very clear ideas and examples of how the idea of merit has developed this moral component in our world. That work and moral desert are tied and how this relationship can be damning in many facets. My only gripe, which isn’t a big one, is that there is a lot of historical coverage, which is good, however, if you aren’t well-read on a lot of the events, the examples can make one feel lost, but take it as a warning rather than a gripe.
Chapter 3: The Rhetoric of Rising
This section of the book goes into the topic of the rhetoric of raising, an idea that Sandel says is a direct consequence of a meritocracy. The core idea is that in the system, we establish a moral value on achieving a certain kind of success celebrating some and blaming those who have not been successful in life. This leads to the introduction of the rhetoric of rising, the idea that as long as one works hard enough, one can make it in the world. He investigates the ideas of responsibility and effort, and how a lot of politicians have used to advocate for a strong work ethic in the country and promote American exceptionalism. The issue that arises if you look at the statistics and reality, what has come about is that more and more people are against this idea and are slowly failing, especially in America. Additionally, many people see this not as a systemic issue, but rather a personal one.
Thoughts: This section is a good addition where Sandel excellently builds up the case for what he is arguing. It can get bogged down just because it’s a very informational book but overall the concepts introduced are succinct and all relate to the overall picture being painted. The ideas of responsibility and how social perception mixed with political rhetoric have influenced fundamental understandings of society are very interesting and I like the examples he has included.
Chapter 4: Credentialism the Last Acceptable Prejudice
This chapter looks into the concept is credentialism, specifically how it impacts society and influences a meritocracy. Sandel explains how society's perception of receiving an education is the way to fulfill the rhetoric of rising and has led to many unintended and dangerous consequences. He goes into the idea of creating people who are discriminated against by their lack of education. This accentuates the meritocratic hubris, leading to the social climate we see today. He ends the chapter by looking at the implementation of technocratic ideals and says how this assumption leads to the populists missing the moral components present in political debate.
Thoughts: This section is pretty good and goes into the normal details of the book just like the other chapters. However, I’m starting to feel like some points just feel repetitive or unnecessary. The examples presented in the beginning felt more accurate or necessary whereas now, some seem to be redundant. There are also points where I’m like “Bro was that necessary?” Like on page 107 with the one paragraph that just lists all the ways Obama put “smart” in front of concepts like really? A whole paragraph of them??? Just say it was said 900 times and move on!
Chapter 5: Success Ethic
This section goes into the idea of success, evaluating exactly how the USA has impacted this view of success, and how it has affected social esteem amongst a variety of people. He also evaluates two systems of thinking in political philosophy that have addressed meritocracy as a problem and propose solutions, each being welfare state liberalism and free market liberalism.
Thoughts: So far this chapter feels like the most important chapter. There wasn’t a section I felt wasn’t necessary and he clearly states in multiple places where everything you’ve learned so far ties together. He even explicitly states the argument of the book in the first part of the chapter. The inclusion of the two arguments and how their thoughts eventually converge onto a meritocratic bend was interesting. Overall good section.
Chapter 6: The Sorting Machine
This Chapter goes in-depth into the idea of college admissions, and how meritocratic ideas have influenced college. Specifically, the idea that colleges are functionally becoming a sorting machine dividing people with good or bad standing within society. He evaluates how the data shows that people who perform well in SATs don’t perform better in universities and that an SAT is not a good way to select a good academic aptitude. On top of that, he evaluates a variety of different variables leading him to explain how they could be potential solutions to avoid this problem, maintain some semblance of credit, and ends the chapter by looking at the harm that the system causes and eventually explaining how this all leads back to the tyranny of merit.
Thoughts: I feel like we run into the same problem we’ve been running into. That being there are important details, but there are also a lot of places where the wording and the information kind of feel repetitive. This could be helpful to some, as a means of reinforcing the knowledge, but it can read lessen the reading experience. A positive is he brings up university students and he gets to go into the specific harms that occur against many students trying to make it in this system. Additionally, the inclusion of a solution to the sorting problem of universities as well as the objections to it is good. Overall, I feel like this chapter was very jampacked with ideas and different subjects. Some of which I believe are better than others.
Chapter 7: Recognizing Work
This chapter goes into the ideas of how social esteem is an important consideration when thinking about the world of jobs and merit. It goes into how this impacts people and even offers a few solutions on how to fix the problem from both conservative and liberal perspectives.
Thoughts: This is probably my favorite section just because it’s the most concise. It brought a lot of good ideas, a balance of perspective, and was simple to read and finish off.
Conclusion
There wasn’t enough stuff for me to rate this section but it’s a simple end to the book!
Review
Writing- This book has many pros to writing, with a few drawbacks as well. For the pros, I think Sandel does a great job at situating every idea in real-world examples. The common problem with philosophical texts is that at times, it feels that they exist in a vacuum and that is just not present here. There are really good examples that allow one to really feel for the direction he's going and ground yourself in the idea as well. Secondly, I think he does a good job of balancing the examples given. It's never fully directed at one political party or the other, even giving solutions that come from both types of thinkers. The biggest drawback of his writing is that it can be very dry. There isn't a lot of character behind the words presented, and it can be a bit technical which can make it difficult to follow in a quick go around. Secondly, I think a con is the repetitiveness of some ideas. I understand that it serves to reiterate the ideas, but stylistically, it hurts it a bit.
Score : 23/40- 5.7
Content- This book has a lot to offer in it. There are multiple ideas presented that are valuable outside the thesis of this book, like Weber's idea on the protestant work ethic. This does not include the argument itself, which I think does a good job of evaluating the nature of the political landscape on its conception of success, its thoughts on work, and the value we place on it. The only real drawback of the book goes back to my writing comment, which is that it feels repetitive or includes unnecessary ideas. So though I would say there is a lot overall, the individual chapters suffer a bit due to this.
Score: 28.5/40- 7.1
Difficulty- Overall, Sandel makes this book accessible to many readers, having modern examples, and even including definitions on a lot. He also reiterates a lot of the ideas so if you don’t understand a topic the first time it is presented, you can understand it elsewhere. However, there is some knowledge one needs about politics and political terminology that if you don't know will make this a bit difficult to read. It's not impossible, but it would be a bit difficult.
Score: 12/40 - 3.0 ( not too difficult)
Personal Thoughts- The argument presented in this book is one that I get behind. I have always argued against the idea of college credentialing being the penultimate act that paves success, and I've always felt bad that some jobs are seen as less than others. When I came across Sandel’s idea it resonated with me. His argument is very thorough and contextualized in a modern political context. I think his hypothesis on the shift in the political spirit that has led to the election of Trump is very interesting as well. I think I love this book in most ways except for the writing. There are many areas that I felt could have been condensed, and I felt there is some clarity that could have been added by defining some terms, like what he means by tyranny and how exactly merit functions as such.
Score: 29.7/40- 7.4
Final thoughts
This is a solid book for anyone interested in Western politics and cares about philosophical thoughts that have a practical edge to it. Though the writing is a bit troublesome, if you read it somewhat casually and take your time, you won't feel the issues. If you have some background in politics, this book will be easier to read than others, but if you don't, just have Google at the ready, and you'll be alright after the first few chapters. I'd recommend this book to anyone with the time to get into the subject matter and who has an interest in the role success plays in politics.
Overall rating: 6.8/10
Additional thoughts
I wanted to offer you guys a few objections to the book as a way of prompting further thought on your part. These objections are not my one, rather they come from a podcast interview with the author himself and Alex O’Conner from the Within Reason podcast. I will be presenting the two main objections here, and implore you to listen to the rest for not only Sandel’s rebuttals but also his elaborations on the idea.
Obj 1-” Does this trivialize moral desert generally?” The idea of the moral desert references the idea that in any given moral situation, where do the chips fall? This means who deserves the blame and who deserves the praise. In Sandel’s argument, the resting idea is that merit does a poor job of distributing a desert of social and economic esteem by utilizing merit as the starting point. The question launched by Alex is does this devalue desert in all cases? Take for example criminals, one could make the same argument as Sandel, saying they are born with these afflictions or are victims of the circumstances they were brought up in. If the case equally applies, could we say that criminals do not deserve their punishments? This is a very widespread critique, thus I chose to share it for you all to ponder.
Obj 2-” Striving for the top of the social recognition through merit provides a powerful and necessary incentive for society, without it, no one would strive for more”. The basic idea is that being able to work our way to the top and be the best of the best is an important motivator for many in society. We achieve greatness by striving for this dream, without it, why would anyone want to do better than the bare minimum? This objection gets into some important nuances of the argument so I implore you to think of it.
Again, I highly recommend Alex’s conversation with Sandel and will link you to it below.
The Tyranny of Merit | Do We Deserve What We Get? Michael Sandel & Cosmic Skeptic