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Sandel on The Tyranny of Merit

20/9/2021

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1 Comment

Joe M

28/9/2021 08:26:32 pm

"There is nothing wrong with hiring people based on merit. In fact, it is generally the right thing to do. If I need a plumber to fix my toilet or a dentist to repair my tooth, I try to find the best person for the job" (p. 33). And—to take the other side of the equation—there is nothing wrong with individuals feeling entitled to reward when they do what has merit. That is an entirely appropriate reaction. If the plumber does a "good" job with my toilet (objectively, or in my opinion?—not sure), or the dentist with my tooth, then they are entitled not only to the agreed payment but also to some pride in their work. But if there is nothing wrong with /my/ choosing the best plumber for my toilet, nor with /your/ hiring the best dentist for your tooth, nor with anyone else's choosing the best person for the job that they want done, then how can there be anything wrong with whole /society's/ operating on this basis?

Sandel disagrees, and objects to the idea that "society should allocate economic rewards and positions of responsibility" (p. 34) according to merit. This is my first problem. Clearly, when the plumber fixed my toilet, society did /not/ "allocate" him to me. Rather, I gave him that responsibility and reward. So we do best to understand Sandel to be objecting to the idea that society should /allow/ such things to be allocated (by others) according to merit, which means that the onus on him to explain why third parties should interfere with (eg) my choice of a plumber.

But Sandel does agree that merit matters, for various reasons (p. 33). It promotes efficiency, renounces discrimination, and—in my view, most importantly—it affirms human agency. As Sandel puts it, "If my success is my own doing, something I've earned through talent and hard work, I can take pride in it, confident that I deserve the rewards of my achievements bring" (p. 34). Or, as I prefer to put it, if the plumber does a good job, then he is entitled to the financial reward and to take pride in his work. And—applied to the craft of living—if a person does well in living (by which I mean what Aristotle refers to as reliably acting out of practical virtue), then they are entitled to the material rewards that brings, and to take pride in their life.

But Sandel thinks that the merit principle can take a tyrannical turn, /especially when a society actually lives up to it/ (pp. 24, 34). He has various complaints.

First, "it is unclear why the talented deserve the outsize rewards that market-driven societies lavish on the successful" (p. 24). For neither having certain talents, nor finding ourselves in a society which prizes them, are our own doing. But, first, I am not paying the plumber for having talent, but simply to fix my toilet. True, my toilet would not be fixed unless he had some talent, but that conflates moral correlation with moral causation, which is just as much of a mistake in ethics as the corresponding mistake is in social science. And, second, the claim is not that the talented /deserve/ the outsize (financial) rewards, but simply that they are /entitled/ to them, if that is what was agreed by way of payment. They may or may not be entitled to pride in their work, but that depends on whether we insist that the work is objectively valuable (in which case no) or simply valued by the market (yes).

Second, the meritocratic ethic promotes hubris among the winners, and humiliation among the losers (p. 25). The winners can assure themselves that they deserve what they have, and the losers cannot escape the conclusion that they just weren't good enough. But who knows whether espousing the merit principle has these effects? And, in any case, the principle itself does not /imply/ them. It is entirely possible for a good plumber to take pride in their work without hubris. And most of us without any talent for plumbing manage not to be humiliated by the fact. (But perhaps only because we do not care to be good plumbers?) This suggests—applying these ideas to life—that those whose talent has led to their doing well in life should be able to take pride in their achievements without hubris, and that those without that talent who therefore fail should not be humiliated (after all, its not /their/ fault, if they did their best), but that may be asking too much of human beings, and that may be Sandel's point.

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Sandel on The Tyranny of Merit

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