Early frontrunner for my book of the year - The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel
More of the same... Possibly back to the office at the end of March; the first milestone in the return to normality... In more exciting news I'm taking Thursday-Sunday off this weekend, good opportunity to chill... And maybe get started on my next New Philosopher submission...
Review of the Week
In my opinion, books and articles should primarily be an opportunity to challenge existing beliefs rather than just to reaffirm them. That being said, it can be nice to read a book making arguments I already agree with when it manages to frame the issues far better than I ever could.
I knew before I purchased The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel that there was plenty of evidence that I'd enjoy it:
- Justice (also by Sandel) is the book which inspired my interest in reading political philosophy,
- I thoroughly enjoyed this article to promote the book,
- My Mum recommended the book to me having read the above article based on discussions we've had at home, despite the fact I'd never previously mentioned Sandel or his work.
It would be fair to say the book lived up to its billing as 'something I'd enjoy', so I've opted to use this review to try to bring out its ideas and how they relate to my own thoughts. Although most of the examples come from America, I think there is still utility in using this to look at aspects of our own politics, particularly given how much political discourse, particularly on the left, is imported from the US.
Sandel begins with defining the features of a meritocracy and how they has become an increasing part of political life and discourse. He describes it as a society which allocates economic rewards, positions and social standing on the basis of merit; put simply: 'we get what we deserve'. He draws a line from the Protestant work ethic in early America through to more modern secular and liberal beliefs of individual being master of their fate which are familiar to us today. By studying political speeches, he shows this has become increasingly explicit from Reagan through to Obama. It is now directly invoked as a desired way to structure society by leaders and those seeking election on both sides of the Atlantic. For example we have Hilary Clinton on the campaign trail saying:
Our campaign is about the fundamental belief that, in America, every person, no matter what you look like, who you are, who you love, you should have the chance to go as far as your hard work and dreams will take you,
as well as Theresa May stating shortly after becoming PM that she "want[s] Britain to be the world's greatest meritocracy".
So, as we are increasingly stating the goal of society in meritocratic terms, does that reflect where we are today? Sandel would suggest not. There are numerous statistics cited to show this, which I'll give a smattering of:
- There is a very clear link in the US between family income and SAT scores.
- Only one in twenty born into the bottom fifth of income will make it into the top fifth, which is worse than Social Democratic Germany, Denmark, Canada (and many others) who focus on redistributive policies rather than allocation on moral desert.
- Two thirds of students at Harvard & Stanford come from the top fifth by income; across Ivy League universities only 4% of students come from the bottom fifth.
- Things are at least getting better at Oxford, where undergraduate admissions from private schools have dropped from 44% to 31% over the past five years, but this is very high compared to only 7% of the country being privately educated.
- One third of legacy applications succeed at Harvard (children of alumnus), compared to one in twenty overall applicants.
Given the number of times the meritocratic ideal are cited by politicians, failure to achieve a meritocracy this isn't for want of trying. Sandel goes further than just criticising meritocracy on this basis. He goes further, to argue that a meritocracy is not a just society; that if it were achievable it would not be desirable.
The first reason is one that I was familiar with - allocating the rewards of society on the basis of merit is as morally arbitrary as assigning it on the basis of birth like in an aristocracy. Without going into deep philosophical depth about what makes up an individual and issues around free will, merit can be attributed to:
- Natural born talents,
- Good schooling and education,
- Family background,
- Luck,
- Hard work;
which are all, in my eyes, morally arbitrary (although strong arguments can be made that hard work comes from the individual so is not arbitrary in this sense). Thus, Sandel argues that to distribute disporportionate rewards on the basis of merit is not just. That's not to say that we should have a soviet-esque, dry, equality of outcome. But perhaps aim for something closer to the Rawlsian conception of justice.
The other key argument against meritocracy is the lack of prestige conferred onto society's losers, coupled with feelings of humiliation and resentment when they have to deal with the hubris of those who have won out. This leads to a loss of solidarity in society as the winners see little obligation to support the losers, who are blamed for their struggles.
We also see that by suggesting the rewards of society go to those who merit it, the implication is that those who are in low paid jobs are not doing work that benefits wider society. Traditionally, in a more balanced society, those without degrees who do menial and low-paid work would at least have dignity in what they do and feel like they are contibuting to the common good. This loss of prestige is considered a key cause of the increase in 'deaths of despair' in the US since the early 90s due to drugs, alcohol and heart disease amongst non-college educated men & women aged 45-54. The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton who discovered the threefold increase in these deaths between 1990 and 2017 described this as:
Reflect[ing] a long-term and slowly unfolding loss of a way of life for the white, less educated working class.
This leads into ideas for the increasing popularity of populism sweeping across American and European politics. Rather than just looking at these forces through an economic or racist lens, Sandel describes these movements as coming from legitimate grievances regarding national identities, inequality and anti-technocratic sentiment. The voters have recognised that our politics is becoming economics by other means, rather than searching for a common good, and have opted to rebel against it. Rather than listening, the mainstream parties have opted to demonise these voters as less educated and racist, which only adds fuel to the fire.
So what can we do about this? Sandel offers two key ideas. The most radical idea in the book is to turn admissions to top Ivy League and Russel Group universities into a lottery. This idea seems absurd at first glance, but has since grown on me. Admissions become figuring out which students would be able to thrive at an institution, before making the final selection by lottery. He argues that this would reduce the stakes of the sorting hat approach to entrance exams, and allow teenagers to enjoy the finer things in life rather than live an existence dedicated to optimising admissions forms.
I also see an upside that it makes explicit the contingency of life. I see this from my own experience of narrowly getting into grammar school (I was so low down on the waiting list I got called up the day before school started) being fairly pivotal in my development of who I am now. Plenty of people who get into top higher education establishments will also have made it large part by luck, but go through life attributing it solely to their skill. By instituting a ballot system, we would reduce the hubris of those who make it and lessen the indignity of those who don't.
The second idea is less of a policy than a shift in outlook for how we consider at democratic society. Sandel wants us to move away from technocratic government, ruled by elites who consider democracy as economics by other means, towards one of contributive justice. Here, citizens feel responsible for each other's well-being, with the polity coming together to debate moral values and how we can achieve a common good.
Linked to this are ideas that we should shift policy focus from maximising GDP and consumer welfare, towards improving the life of the producer, looking to facilitate worthwhile and fluorishing lives for everybody. Critiques regarding the emphasis in politics on the consumer rather than the producer feel like a nice extension to the ideas raised by Klein in No Logo (previously reviewed here) and something which I will continue to reflect on as a way of looking at modern political discourse.
Training Thoughts
Round 2 of the EA Virtual Relays saw a better effort from me - 29:07 (compared to 29:40 last time). 4s/km faster (though this may be deceptive due to GPS). Training still going well, in the middle of a big week this week before going for an hour of power next weekend!
Coding Projects
Today is the big day for the Hash Code - had a final practise with the 2020 qualifier round last weekend which seemed to go okay for around 2 hours of work. I'll be curious to see how we perform over the full 4 hours. My personal experience in other coding competitions has shown that I often pull out to a decent score but run out of ideas after the first half with the second half only giving minor, incremental improvements. Hopefully as a team we'll push through!
Top Twitter Follows
Since I have better things to do, I don't spend my life staring at Covid statistics praying for cases/hospitalisations/deaths to fall each day. Fortunately, through the magic of twitter I've found Oliver Johnson, a Bristol maths prof who posts these things daily, along with interpretation. Hopefully we'll remain on his infamous log-scaled axis towards 0 infections/deaths/hospitalisations.
Other Thoughts
- I've been waiting for about 2 months for Working by Studs Terkel to arrive, a sociological study of how workers saw work written in 1974. Hopefully this will contextualise the stuff that I've been reading by Sandel, if it ever arrives...
- Tempted to give the alice band a go. I suspect it'd be good for the running free speed, bad for the dating. So... net good I guess...
- I've published my shortlisted essay for the New Philosopher writer's award here, any thoughts welcome as always.