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

“Any hope of renewing our moral and civic life depends on understanding how, over the past four decades, our social bonds and respect for one another came unraveled.”

Sandel is at pains throughout the text to emphasize the common good and the duties and responsibilities that citizens have in relation to one another. The social bonds that were taken for granted in previous generations no longer exist, and the book is largely an attempt to explain why this has happened, and what can be done to remedy the issue.

“Our public debates are not about meritocracy itself but about how to achieve it.”

One of the fundamental tenets of the book is to question the entire concept of meritocracy. Contemporary discussions simply assume that it is an unqualified good but, Sandel argues, that is an assumption that belies the reality experienced by tens of millions of people in their everyday lives. Rather than make an assumption, the question should go back to the very root of the system itself.

“For the more we think of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.”

The common good is such an essential aspect of public life, that anything that damages that good should be seen as suspect and fought against. If meritocracy serves to make people more selfish, and serves to delude them into thinking they are self-sufficient monads who have achieved success apart from any other help or assisting structures, then it needs to be either rejected or severely qualified.