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cvsthehuman 's review for:
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
by Michael J. Sandel
medium-paced
I read this book for Ethics class in the master's and wrote a whole paper about it, so I will give some condensed/random thoughts here.
Learned: The book's main thesis is that meritocracy is not the shit everyone makes it out to be and although I don't really agree with him, I liked that the book challenged me to really question meritocracy (and then come to the conclusion.... there is no alternative.... I think it is worth striving for). The book also made me reminded me how fooked up some things in the US are (glorification of elite universities and all the negative social impacts this has, the over-representation of the wealthy in said elite universities, lack of investment in technical colleges, how much more CEOs make than the avg worker in the US) and how important public institutions and the welfare state are (public universities are more socio-economically diverse and lead to greater social mobility).
Lacked: The thesis of my paper was that 1) the book was incredibly US-centric without ever acknowledging it and 2) the problems he describes are less symptoms of meritocracy and more symptoms of neoliberalism and individualism (both of which are strongly present in the US). I also had interesting convos with Jesus and Adriana about this book, who argue that the social strife that Sandel claims to be because people at the bottom feel (/are told) that they "deserve" their social standing is total BS. They argued that this is not a new phenomenon at all (see below).
Follow-up questions: Toqueville and his observations on social mobility and contested societies? More social mobility means ppl are constantly confronted with what they DON'T have which leads to more contestedness? How does neoliberalism interact with this phenomenon?
Learned: The book's main thesis is that meritocracy is not the shit everyone makes it out to be and although I don't really agree with him, I liked that the book challenged me to really question meritocracy (and then come to the conclusion.... there is no alternative.... I think it is worth striving for). The book also made me reminded me how fooked up some things in the US are (glorification of elite universities and all the negative social impacts this has, the over-representation of the wealthy in said elite universities, lack of investment in technical colleges, how much more CEOs make than the avg worker in the US) and how important public institutions and the welfare state are (public universities are more socio-economically diverse and lead to greater social mobility).
Lacked: The thesis of my paper was that 1) the book was incredibly US-centric without ever acknowledging it and 2) the problems he describes are less symptoms of meritocracy and more symptoms of neoliberalism and individualism (both of which are strongly present in the US). I also had interesting convos with Jesus and Adriana about this book, who argue that the social strife that Sandel claims to be because people at the bottom feel (/are told) that they "deserve" their social standing is total BS. They argued that this is not a new phenomenon at all (see below).
Follow-up questions: Toqueville and his observations on social mobility and contested societies? More social mobility means ppl are constantly confronted with what they DON'T have which leads to more contestedness? How does neoliberalism interact with this phenomenon?