How the Meritocracy Illusion Divided the U.S.

29:32I mean, the argument seems to be telling the elite to stop being so condescending, stop having so much hubris. You know, at a certain point, that seems paternalistic and elite, you know, that the have-nots are absolved of responsibility for adapting to, you know, whatever the world throws in front of them. Right. Well, OK, that's a good provocation, Adi. And so let me let me see if I can respond to that. adapting to whatever the world throws in front of them. We sometimes portray globalization and technology just in that way, as forces, external forces that the world throws in front of us and throws in front of those who struggle to adapt.

30:22But what this misses, Adi, and the point of my book, The Tyranny of Merit, is to make this point. A lot of what we consider as sometimes as external forces that just happen, like the weather, and people who struggle need to adapt by getting themselves a college degree, for example, misses the agency, the agency involved in the responsibility of governing elites to have made certain choices about how to configure technology, how to configure the global economy, choices that resulted in putting a greater premium on going to a highly selective university and getting an advanced degree. So I want to push the question back to those policies and have a broader public debate when we think about economics, about the dignity of work.

31:28What would it take to renew the dignity of work? How could we reconfigure the economy? Take a small example, Adi. During this pandemic, those of us with the luxury of working from home can't help but notice how deeply we rely on workers we often overlook. Not only those working in the hospitals to treat COVID patients, but delivery workers, warehouse workers, grocery store clerks, home health care providers, child care providers. These are not the best paid or most honored workers in our society. But now, what are we calling them? We're calling them essential workers. So I think this could be the beginning, an opening for a broader public debate about how to bring their pay and recognition into better alignment with the importance of the work they do.

32:27This is the kind of broader debate about how to affirm and renew the dignity of work that I think is the responsibility of all of us, not just a matter of saying, if you didn't manage to get a four-year college degree, then your failure is your fault. I think that's not only unfair, I think it's also a recipe for precisely the anger and resentment and polarization that has opened the way to a kind of authoritarian populist political appeal of the kind we saw in 2016, Adi.

33:04Michael J. Sandel:Thank you for that, Michael. And I just want to remind everyone watching, if you have a question, please do post it in the comments because we'll be going to your question shortly. But before we do that, Michael, I do want to talk a bit more about the moment we're in right now and about pay and the themes of recognition that you just discussed. In your new book, The Tyranny of Merit, the penultimate chapter talks about the recognition of work. And you reference how in this deeply polarizing time, large numbers of people are feeling ignored and unappreciated. Right now, working parents are at breaking point.

33:44Michael J. Sandel:There are widespread and well-founded fears that this pandemic will exacerbate gender inequalities and the gender pay gap. How do we tackle this and where does the responsibility lie to ensure that women in particular do not continue to fall behind? Well, Octavia, that's such an important question, because I think that what the pandemic is showing, it's not itself creating these inequalities. It's highlighting, dramatizing inequalities that pre-existed the pandemic, including inequalities of pay, including gender inequalities. And so what I think we need to do, we need to step back and ask a fundamental question that underlies debates about pay and about taxation and about recognition.

34:45And that is, what really counts as a valuable contribution to the common good? good. We have a tendency to assume, now this may get me into more trouble from maybe Adi, but we'll see. We tend to assume that the money people make is the measure of their contribution to the common good. But I think this is a mistake. We can think of lots of examples throughout our economy. And Octavia, you gave a very good example just now of the work that disproportionately still is performed by women in raising children, even though there is some greater attention to that inequality still. Much of the contributions made by those who care for children and raise families is either outside the labor market or not rewarded by the labor market in proportion to its true value.

35:53And the same can be said of many important roles within education. So I think we need to challenge the assumption that the money people make is the true measure of their contribution to the common good. Well, then, what's the alternative? The alternative is to have a public debate about what we really consider to be the most valuable contributions to the common good. And then we need to discuss how to configure the economy to respond to those contributions in a way that the economy doesn't today. So, for example, we could have a debate about wage subsidies as a way of increasing the pay and recognition of certain jobs, certain roles that we recognize are very important, but that the labor market left to its own devices doesn't properly reward.

36:54And so this, I think—here's another way of putting it, Octavia—I think that, especially in recent decades, we have outsourced our moral judgment about what's a valuable contribution to markets. And I think we should reclaim that judgment because the market verdict isn't always the right one about what contribution really is worthy of pay and recognition. We need to reclaim that for democratic debate and then design our economy in a way that responds to it. Do you think that, Octavia, is that too provocative a proposal?

37:32Michael J. Sandel:I'd love that.

37:36No beef for me either here. So out of you for this too. Okay. Let's go to questions from, we have people who are viewing from all over the world. So here's a question from Florian in Hamburg, who asks, you know, one of the arguments often brought up is that the myth of meritocracy is sustained by the elite who may be more influential than the common citizens. So if there's no interest in changing it among those benefiting from it the most, how can citizens mobilize to really try to change the system? Well, that's an important question. First, I think we've got to bring everyone along. So we need to mobilize everyone.

38:16And the way to begin that, I think, is to draw the connection for everyone between the deep polarization that we're facing, which everyone worries about, the polarization in our politics, in our society, in our culture, the evident anger and resentment and sense of grievance by a great many citizens that their voices aren't being heard, that their wages are stagnant but more than that, that work in the traditional sense seems no longer recognized and honored the way it once was. These are things that I think everyone cares about. Those who have landed on top as well as those who struggle. So I think we need a new politics of the common good that could address, could show the connection between this way of thinking about success, the credentialism, the tendency of elites to look down and assume that those who struggle must themselves be at fault for their plight.

39:28We need to reconsider this if we're to heal the deep divisions that the divide between winners and losers have created. So this might be the beginning of a kind of politics of the common good that would start from the idea of healing. Everyone wants healing. Everyone wants to ease the rancor and the resentment that animates much of the rancor. So that's where I would begin. So I'm going to combine a couple of questions. This is Jim from Indianapolis and Jane from Ireland. The questions are sort of how do we define some of these concepts? So who gets to write the definition of a, quote, just society?

40:16And then similarly, how does community build a shared concept of the common good? How do you do it? What are the steps to get there? Right. Well, who gets to write the definition of a just society? The answer is no one person in particular, though each of us will have our views. This is the work of democracy, if it's properly functioning. A healthy democratic society consists in large part in an ongoing debate about what justice consists in, what it requires. And part of the problem in our public life in recent decades, I think, is that our public discourse has been hollow, empty of larger meaning and moral purpose.

41:05What passes for political discourse these days, sadly, consists mainly of shouting matches, where politicians and people on talk radio and cable television shout past one another without really listening or attending to the convictions, the moral convictions that lie behind positions with which we disagree. So this connects, too, with the second part of the question, Adi, about what a politics of the common good would look like. It would begin with a morally more robust kind of public discourse than the kind to which we become accustomed, where we debate openly competing notions of justice, of what we owe one another as citizens, of what counts as a valuable contribution to the common good.

41:56Our public discourse seems a long way from that today. But I think the widespread desire to heal, to elevate the terms of public discourse, to aim for something better, has created a moment that at least is open to this more morally serious, engaged kind of civic conversation. All right. So I have one more question, and this is from Adi Ignatius in Boston. So when you talk about the negative effects of elite condescension, I really wonder, you know, what do you think about the generally left-leaning, you know, national political satire shows that reinforce this? The Daily Show, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, Saturday Night Live.

42:43You know, the perspective, of course, is, you know, that we're smart and the other guys are idiots. Is that good, clean fun, or do you think that's damaging to American politics? Well, I like some of those shows. Not all of them. the snarkiness of the humor, which may actually touch on the point that you're identifying, Adi. The snarkiness is, I've never developed a taste for it. And I haven't reflected until now, Adi, that maybe the reason I'm not drawn to the snarky humor has a little bit to do with its being tinged with this hubris. So it's an interesting suggestion. But if we look across the media depiction of working people, especially working men generally, it is striking how the public popular culture reflects this tendency of elites to look down.

43:37I mean, think of Archie Bunker, think of Homer Simpson, that white working males depicted in popular culture on TV sitcoms tend not to be depicted very honorably or with much dignity. And so I think that it's worth reflecting on the way attitudes toward success, attitudes toward winning and losing, including meritocratic hubris, find their way in seemingly benign ways into the popular culture and into the media. I think it's worth considering, Adi. I think you've got a point. Thanks so much. I have one last question for you and then we're going to wrap this up. But I am curious, the message of talking about the dignity of work I think is crucially important and the humility that you talk about.

44:43But there is also the disappearance of work and it's not just globalization, it's technology and automation and it seems to be irrevocable. And I'm just kind of wondering if we're led to a place of a universal income or a place where people are given what they need to kind of flourish in all different sorts of ways that maybe some are valued or different ways in society. Is that where we are heading with this, apart from the rhetoric of the dignity of work right now? Well, it's a fascinating question. Some have proposed a universal basic income as a way of making the end of work for a great many people easier to bear.

45:29And if that's the main inspiration for a UBI, I'm a little bit wary about it for the following reason. I'm ambivalent about the universal basic income, Josh, and that's because as providing a basic income floor for everyone, I think that's a good thing, especially if the funds used to provide that floor don't depend on destroying other important aspects of the safety net, such as access to health care, for example, or to education, or to food support for those who need it. However, I don't think we can or should try to build a society or an economy without work for a large segment of the population.

46:31because I think it's important. I think people identify and aspire not only as consumers able to buy stuff, having purchasing power, important though that is, but I think people aspire to be producers, to be contributors to the common good. I think the fundamental human need, and this is why work is so important, the fundamental human need is to be needed by one's fellow citizens and to be recognized and appreciated for answering some important human need. Because this is what it's in our role as producers, as contributors, that we affirm our identity as members of a shared way of life, of community.

47:24Now, those contributions need not necessarily be commodified through the labor market. And in a way, this goes back to the discussion, the exchange with Octavia about unpaid labor and how it can be appreciated and affirmed. But I would hesitate long and hard before embracing a kind of utopian or dystopian scenario that imagines that technology and robots and machines will replace work for a substantial portion of the population, unless we can reimagine ways of contributing and winning esteem for our contributions outside the terms of the labor market. But that's how I would at least frame the question.

48:14And I think we need to put that question, the question of work and the dignity of work and the meaning of contribution and of the honor and esteem that goes with contribution right at the center of democratic public discourse, Josh. I think that's a great note to end on. I know I have a ton more questions, and I'm sure my co-hosts do as well. And I really hope people get the book and start discussing its ideas. There it is. Thank you, Adi. And have their own questions. It's provocative. It's important. And I'm really glad, Michael, that you were able to join us today. Thank you so much for being on the show.

48:54Well, thank you, Josh. Thanks, Adi and Octavia. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. We look forward to seeing everyone next week. And until then, have a great rest of your week. So long.

49:30And we're back. We're back. Way to persevere, team. Wow. Our first technical difficulty. That was great. We never actually had to use the sign. No. Thank you so much, Michael, for hanging in there because that was a little rough start, but it was really great. Great conversation. Well, I really enjoyed the conversation. And I want to know whether you three were being polite or whether you find some of this persuasive. What do you make of it? Yeah, let's have Adam for real now.

50:04Michael J. Sandel:It was very persuasive. I thought it was fantastic. Thank you so much for the depth and thought behind the responses that you gave us. Really appreciate it. I learned a lot. Thank you. I found it to be incredibly – it's hard because I feel as though a lot of us have grown up with this rhetoric for so long. And the connection back to Robert Kennedy and some of the things that I've read of his speeches around GDP and valuing different things, I thought where did the liberals kind of lose that thread? Was it just economic and they had to play to – You know, like it feels as though they were right there for a long time.

50:46But then for most of my life and certainly adult life, I've gotten the clear message of the meritocracy. Right, right. And Robert F. Kennedy is a great example, Josh, of the of a different way of discussing these things. Exactly. He was not saying the point of our mission is to help a few more people scramble up the ladder of success, even as the rungs on the ladder are going further apart. He wasn't about that. He was about, well, very much about the dignity of work. And he spoke, he appealed to African-American voters and to white working class voters without a college education. He brought these two disempowered communities, in many ways disempowered communities, together because, I think, because he was speaking a different kind of language, including the language of dignity and including the language of belonging and a sense of belonging that comes from contributing.

51:54So in many ways, he brought the best of a left progressive tradition together with a certain kind of conservative emphasis on values. And so I agree with you, Josh, that the Democratic Party and I think liberal politics generally, after RFK, lost the ability to speak in that language. It was also a moral and spiritual language that he drew upon and brought to bear. And we've forgotten that. And it was almost swept away by technocratic orientation of politics. The only place that I would kick back, and Josh started to ask it, is the whole question of the dignity of work. I like the argument that we made an unwelcome shift in our economic thinking from focusing on the primacy of production and focusing instead on the primacy of consumption of consumers.

52:54But production seems sort of like a 20th century thing. And, you know, as John said, new technologies are going to wipe out jobs, are going to wipe out industry. So how do you sustain the dignity of a coal worker if the entire industry is on its way out? Well, we need to find other ways, significant ways, that that coal miner can contribute without telling the coal miner become a coder. See, this is the key. I think we need to actually go into communities like coal mining communities. And instead of just pronouncing in the abstract, well we're going to go for clean energy and that'll create a lot of jobs, that's hard to make that connection in a very direct way with what that coal mining community will become.

53:46So I think that a politics that takes this seriously goes into coal mining communities with various scenarios, let's say, for clean energy jobs that could be performed with some retraining, but not without a massive radical change in that person's way of life, and engage in discussion and dialogue with, say, the coal mining community about how the job possibilities of clean energy might actually become attractive alternative ways that people with similar skills, maybe with some retraining, could achieve. And so I think that it has to be done on a granular grassroots basis like that, that actually includes people whose jobs will be displaced and whose ways of life are bound up with those jobs in thinking about and deliberating about how to make this transition.

54:58Adi, does that make any sense? Yeah, but it sounds to me like you're basically a technical optimist that, yes, industries will get wiped out, but new technologies will create new jobs and that we don't need to think about universal basic income because something will come up to keep people productive. Or are you suggesting maybe technology should wipe out jobs, but let's not let it? Let's preserve jobs because dignity is more important than efficiency. Which is the only reason I hesitate. I've never seen a company not automate to save money and to eliminate jobs if it helped the bottom line. So it would be a very radical rethink of how people approach things.

55:36Well, I do think that dignity is more important than efficiency. and that we should figure out a way to enable the economy and the development of technology to respond to that. How the companies respond, whether the companies will invariably go for efficiency over dignity, I think that partly depends on the broader economic structures and tax incentives that are in place. and so and I also don't think we should take for granted, well if I could come back Adi to what she said production seems so 20th century and I that, I think that's a telling observation and it's a widespread view but I would want to rethink that a little bit because if we really consign production to the dustbin of history, I think we're throwing out a lot along the way.

56:48I'm not talking about particular technologies of production. Of course, those change, and they change the configuration of winning and losing. But production, understood as contribution, because that's really what production is about fundamentally in moral and political economy. It's about contribution of goods and services that people value, that society values. Production understood as contribution. I don't think we can jettison that, Adi, nor do I think we have to jettison it. Unless we just take for granted that technology is a wholly external factor, like the weather that comes upon us and we just adapt.

57:34I think that underestimates the extent to which the direction of technological innovation is the result of choices, choices that we make and economic incentives that we create. So that there will be new technology is clear, but the direction and the purpose with regard to work of technological innovation, that's not fixed. like that's not like the weather that's the result of lots of choices lots of policies that we make sometimes without fully debating them let's put a stamp over my screen that says schooled by professors no i think what do you think do you think do you think no no let me let me yield the floor no no i just like this i like the term dignity over efficiency i felt like that was that you have like entree to an hbr article there yep that's that i'm happy to talk about but adi just on this point about technology the course of technology not being something like the weather that's wholly given outside us and we just did that do you do you think i'm wrong about that no i don't think you're wrong about that i just um it would i mean a lot of what you say i i really you know, like, it's just, it involves a pretty pectonic shift in how we do things, which is exactly why you should say them.

59:02So I try to be pragmatic about how to get from A to B, and sometimes I'm not, I'm not sure how to do it. But no, I agree with you. I mean, I do think the view of technology and our ability to live with it is a matter of faith. You know, we will either, you know, adapt to it or not. And, you know, you're right, Tax incentives can do a lot. Think of during COVID, the tax incentive said, you'll get money if you don't lay off anybody. And people say, okay, and they got their money. Tax incentives can work miracles if we figure out what we want to do. Could I just put you one other example, Adi, about the direction of technology and how it's not just like the weather, just of a more concrete kind.

59:46Take pharmaceutical development. We still don't have a cure for malaria, but we do have one that's hugely successful for erectile dysfunction. Now, you could say, well, technological innovation just brought us Viagra, and now it's just a question of whether, you know, people do or don't want to take it. And then there are ads encouraging us to take it. And technological innovation just happened not to bring us a cure for malaria. And if we had one, then, of course, we would distribute it and so on. But that poses the question at too late a stage. There are reasons why technology just didn't happen to develop in the direction of a drug for erectile dysfunction, but not for malaria.

1:00:46It happened because of the way the economy creates incentives for lifestyle drugs versus drugs, orphan drugs or drugs for tropical diseases and so on, where there isn't a lot of market power. So this is one small example of how the course that technology takes reflects not some internal logic of technology, but the way we've designed the economy. I mean, that would be an example of what I have in mind. Fascinating. Yeah. Well, really, it really is. Although you said it, we do take it as an article of faith that the mindset part is hard to deal with, that we put so much faith in technology as though it's like the computer says so, so therefore it must be.

1:01:42This is great. I appreciate it. And thank you again for a really great episode. This was actually a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks for hanging out. Great. My pleasure. Thank you all. All right. Take care.