Ondřej Šmída's Key Ideas from The Tyranny of Merit
by Michael J. Sandel

It is very hard to see that you are not sole creator of your own success and that you need luck to achieve it when the society tells you you are 100 % of responsible for the results of your life.

But it also goes hand in hand with fear, because no matter how great the success, there may come a day in the future when we fail. So at the same time, we develop a twisted sense of satisfaction in the failure of others because it means they will not get ahead of us.

A society that rewards merit is also appealing for aspirational reasons. While this can be inspiring, the principle of merit can take a tyrannical turn—not only when societies fail to live up to this ideal, but also—and especially—when they succeed.

The dark side of the meritocratic ideal lies embedded in its most alluring promise: the promise of mastery and self-making. This promise carries a burden that is hard to bear.

It seems that we should celebrate meritocracy; working-class children could finally compete fairly alongside the children of the privileged. But according to Young, who coined term meritocracy, this would not be an unambiguous triumph—because it would inevitably lead to pride among the winners and humiliation among the losers, along with the belief that everyone deserves what they get.

For Young, meritocracy was not an ideal to be achieved, but a recipe for social discord through humiliation. Decades ago, he foresaw the harsh meritocratic logic that now fuels populist anger.

Thus the politics of humiliation differs in this respect from the politics of injustice. A protest against injustice looks outward; it claims that the system is rigged against them. A protest against humiliation is psychologically more complex. It combines resentment toward the winners with a constant self-doubt: maybe the rich are rich because they truly deserve it; maybe the losers are, in the end, complicit in their own misfortune.

This feature makes the politics of humiliation more explosive than other political sentiments.

There is nothing wrong with hiring people based on merit. In fact, it is generally the right thing to do. When it comes to filling jobs, merit matters for at least two reasons. One is efficiency, the other is fairness.

But the problem is that our technocratic version of meritocracy assigns the moral value of the person not on the merit but on her economic value. In the realm of economics, it simply assumes that the common good is defined by GDP, and that the value of people’s contributions lies in the market value of the goods or services they sell.

Meritocracy starts early—at school, where getting into a good college means for almost everybody almost everything. During their attendance students are placed under enormous pressure to meet a long list of requirements in order to gain admission to a good school, which will hopefully increase their chances of success at getting into good university and help them secure a good job afterwards.

Because of the cost of entrance exams and higher education itself, success tends to be replicated among those who already succeed, leading to a decline in socioeconomic mobility.

Meritocratic hubris is a consequence of overestimating our own role and adopting an arrogant—even contemptuous—attitude toward those who, although they have not succeeded financially or socially, clearly do their part in socially valuable work that "just" happens not to be adequately rewarded by the market.

But because we base a person’s value on their economic worth, we come to believe that everyone gets what they deserve and we should help only those who are not in bad life situation by their fault.

The kinder people who understand that we cannot all be at the top of the ladder want to redistribute resources to the poorer ones so they have basic material goods covered. That attitude is distributive justice.

"We will distribute resources so even though the market is not very kind to you, we ne need your labor and you should have enough of money to cover your basic needs."

That is mostly technocratic attitude. But it is not enough, because if you are on the receiving end it may seem patronizing to you. "Oh you, poor thing, you are not good enough, here is money."

Distributive justice treats us primarily as consumers—ensuring we have enough resources to meet our needs. But it overlooks the fact that we are also producers. We want to contribute to the whole, yet the contributions of less-educated or less-skilled people are often dismissed, devalued, or ignored. That’s why many rebel and vote for anyone willing to recognize their identity and dignity.

The importance of the role of being a producer in a person’s life can be seen in those who no longer need to work—but choose to work anyway.

In a market society, it’s hard to resist the tendency to equate the money we earn with the value of our contribution to the common good. This confusion isn’t just the result of careless thinking. One way to address it is through public debate and policies that encourage us to consciously and democratically reflect on what truly counts as valuable contributions to the common good—and where market verdicts miss the mark, even if values are subjective.