2 “Great Because Good”: A Brief Moral History of Merit

Sandel points to how hiring someone to do a task like fixing the plumbing or repair a broken tooth puts attention to good side meritocracy, as in “… hiring based on merit is a good and sensible practice, what possibly could be wrong with a meritocracy? How can so benign a principle as merit fuel a torrent of resentment so potent as to transform the politics of democratic societies around the world? When exactly did merit turn toxic, and how? (p. 33).”

WHY MERIT MATTERS

Good side of meritocracy points to efficiency and fairness.  Working from the frame of merit, one gets the job done, and, hiring someone on some other basis like identity (race, gender) would not be fair to the person with more talent, and, perhaps also willing to put in more effort. As Sandel frames it, an “…economic system that rewards effort, initiative, and talent is likely to be more productive than one that pays everyone the same, regardless of contribution, or that hands out desirable social positions based on favoritism … it also affirms a certain idea of freedom. This is the idea that our destiny is in our hands, that our success does not depend on forces beyond our control, that it’s up to us. We are not victims of circumstance but masters of our fate… goes hand in hand with a morally comforting conclusion: We get what we deserve (p. 33).”

A COSMIC MERITOCRACY

“Favorable weather and a bountiful harvest are divine rewards for good behavior; drought and pestilence are punishments for sin. When a ship encounters stormy seas, people ask who on the crew has angered God … this outlook is the origin of meritocratic thinking. It reflects the belief that the moral universe is arranged in a way that aligns prosperity with merit and suffering with wrongdoing. This is not far from the familiar contemporary view that wealth signifies talent and hard work and that poverty signifies indolence (p. 33).”

So, as Sandel frames it, a  “… meritocratic society, then, is doubly inspiring: it affirms a powerful notion of freedom, and it gives people what they have earned for themselves and therefore deserve (p. 34).”

But, here is also the source of the dark side of meritocracy, “… the meritocratic ideal is embedded in its most alluring promise, the promise of mastery and self-making. This promise comes with a burden that is difficult to bear. The meritocratic ideal places great weight on the notion of personal responsibility…. But it is one thing to hold people responsible for acting morally; it is something else to assume that we are, each of us, wholly responsible for our lot in life …  To speak of one’s “lot” suggests the drawing of lots, a result determined by fate, fortune, or divine providence, not our own effort.  It points beyond merit and choice to the realm of luck and chance, or on some accounts, grace. (p. 34).”

Referring to Figure 1, DIT would point to merit arising on the ego-based self-interest path 0G.  Regarding our lot in life, said lot is always associated with the other, something outside the self, as described on path 0M, writ large as the “grace of God.”  One can think of path 0M as something coming as a gift, the luck of the draw, the context  --- perhaps a community --- one is embedded within. 

A COSMIC MERITOCRACY

The proposition we get what we deserve is old, like in God giving someone “Favorable weather and a bountiful harvest are divine rewards for good behavior; drought and pestilence are punishments for sin. When a ship encounters stormy seas, people ask who on the crew has angered God … this outlook is the origin of meritocratic thinking … aligns prosperity with merit and suffering with wrongdoing … not far from the familiar contemporary view that wealth signifies talent and hard work and that poverty signifies indolence … (one is the) emphasis on human agency; the other is its harshness toward those who suffer misfortune. (p. 35).”

Sandel tells the story of Job in the bible..  thinking God has punished him, losing his family in storm.  “God finally speaks to Job, he rejects the cruel logic of blaming the victim. He does so by renouncing the meritocratic assumption that Job and his companions share. Not everything that happens is a reward or a punishment for human behavior, God proclaims from the whirlwind (p. 36).”  God is too busy with cosmos to hand out rewards and punishment:  The God source of meritocracy does not stand the test.

SALVATION AND SELF-HELP

So, can people be rewarded with heaven by good works?  Go to hell for sin? Sandel highlights the various approaches to thinking about God in the matter of merit. Many rejected the idea that humans had agency to actually do things that increased the chances to get to heaven. It was view counter to getting to heaven or not by the grace of God. Luther was especially of said mind, as in claiming merit could take one to heaven was counter to the notion of grace. Luther exposed that claim in the Catholic Church, who was charging to lower the time in purgatory, so the wealthy felt even more deserving. As Sandel says it, “The Protestant Reformation was born as an argument against merit (p 38).”  So, it seems Luther would see path 0M as the relationship with God who could act on Grace, the common good with God, with Merit only on path 0G: “It rejected salvation by good works and left no room for human freedom or self-making (p. 38).”

Sandel points out the paradox, as in how said view led to merit based hubris at the top and disdain if not outright punishment for people at the bottom. As DIT would also suggest, such disdain toward people down the income ladder, with hubris at the top, will also ensure far less compensation, lower wages down the ladder than what serves the common good.  Said disdain toward lower income people ensures said income does increase as fast as it needs to be, and the hubris at the top ensures absurdly high compensation at the top. Cases in point include  CEO pay at 300-400 times the typical employee in the firm, and the refusal to increase the minimum wage at the bottom. Said hubris and disdain assures the plague of extreme inequality, and diverges greatly from what DIT frames as optimal inequality, the latter enhancing economic performance and social stability.

Sandel points to how the Calvinists came to claim that working in some trade, profession and working hard at it would be essential to salvation …  point of such work is not to enjoy the wealth it produces but to glorify God (p. 39).”  In effect, the Calvinists confounded the profane&sacred, giving the sacred profane content. Doing so worked to encourage a focus on the  the common good with God, with the community, so “Working for the sake of lavish consumption would be a distraction from this end, a kind of corruption. Calvinism combined strenuous work with asceticism (p. 39).”  Seems Calvinism pointed to path 0Z, with some self-sacrifice in the domain of the profane individual good (i.e. asceticism), in order to produce for the common good. As Sandel says it, “... the significance of this drama consists in the tension that develops between merit and grace (p. 39).”  DIT makes clear it is resolved on path 0Z, as in merit tempered by grace.

 And, it got flipped:   Calvanism pointed to the fact one had an occupation, a call, was an indication one was saved. That turned into the notion that working hard at a vocation led to salvation. It became the Protestant work ethic, about which Lutherans often disagreed, consistent with the  problem Luther saw with good works. In effect, while Calvinists had embedded the profane in the sacred, other Protestants made it seem the profane was sacred.

So, the Protestant work ethic in effect made the profane sacred.   Pursuing the profane served God. The sacred of the common good with God on path 0M got wrapped into the meritorious pursuit of individual good on path 0G.  The profane became sacred.  “Weber glimpses what I would call an early version of meritocratic hubris… The consciousness of divine grace of the elect and holy was accompanied by an attitude toward the sin of one’s neighbor, not of sympathetic understanding based on consciousness of one’s own weakness, but of hatred and contempt for him as an enemy of God bearing the signs of eternal damnation (p. 40).” So, the common good shared with said neighbor over there on the actual path 0M could now be ignored.

PROVIDENTIAL THINKING: THEN AND NOW

Sandel points out that:  “… debates about merit are about worldly success—do the successful earn and therefore deserve their success, or is prosperity due to factors beyond our control?.. The Protestant work ethic began as a tense dialectic of grace and merit, helplessness and self-help. In the end, merit drove out grace. The ethic of mastery and self-making overwhelmed the ethic of gratitude and humility (p. 41).” Through the DIT lens, the matter of the tense dialectic was that between the meritocratic path 0G and the path 0M of grace. The ethic of mastery overwhelming grace is to operate on path 0G without attention to the common good on path 0M.

So, it goes like this, Sandel quoting Mac Weber:  “…’The fortunate [person] is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate… Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others. He wishes to be allowed the belief that the less fortunate also merely experience [their] due.’… The tyranny of merit arises, at least in part, from this impulse … This triumphalist aspect of meritocracy is a kind of providentialism without God, at least without a God who intervenes in human affairs. The successful make it on their own, but their success attests to their virtue. This way of thinking heightens the moral stakes of economic competition. It sanctifies the winners and denigrates the losers. (p. 42).”

So, as Sandel points out, if one “… found yourself on the bottom rung of a meritocratic society, it would be difficult to resist the thought that your disadvantage was at least partly your own doing, a reflection of your failure to display sufficient talent and ambition to get ahead. A society that enables people to rise, and that celebrates rising, pronounces a harsh verdict on those who fail to do so … The term ‘meritocracy’ was invented under the shadow of this worry. Michael Young was a British sociologist affiliated with the Labour Party. As note earlier, in 1958, he wrote a book called The Rise of the Meritocracy.  For Young, meritocracy described a dystopia, not an ideal. He wrote at a time when the British class system was breaking down, giving way to a system of educational and professional advancement based on merit. This was a good thing, because it enabled gifted children of the working class to develop their talents and escape a life consigned to manual labor. But Young also glimpsed the dark side of meritocracy (p. 116).”

Young was a sociologist, writing about the English class society, and the replacement of it by the meritocratic society:

“Without defending the class-bound order that was passing, Young suggested that its moral arbitrariness and manifest unfairness at least had this desirable effect: It tempered the self-regard of the upper class and prevented the working class from viewing its subordinate status as personal failure (p. 116).”

Quoting Young:

“The worker said to himself: ‘Here I am, a workman. Why am I a workman? Am I fit for nothing else? Of course not. Had I had a proper chance I would have shown the world. A doctor? A brewer? A minister? I could have done anything. I never had the chance. And so I am a worker. But don’t think that at bottom I am any worse than anyone else.”

Sandel goes on:  “Young suggests that being clear-eyed about the moral arbitrariness of one’s rank has a certain advantage; it prevents both the winners and the losers from believing they deserve their lot in life. This does not vindicate the class system. But it does shed light on a paradoxical feature of a meritocratic order. Allocating jobs and opportunities according to merit does not reduce inequality; it reconfigures inequality to align with ability (p. 116).”    It all leads to people believing one gets what one deserves.

Quoting Young again:

“ (in meritocratic systems wherein) people are classified by ability, the gap between the classes has inevitably become wider. The upper classes are … no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class. They know too, that not only are they of higher caliber to start with, but that a first-class education has been built upon their native gifts (p. 116).”

Sandel continues:   “… (Young anticipates how such a system eventually leads to)  the meritocratic hubris of elites; he glimpsed their affinity for technocratic expertise, their tendency to look down on those who lacked their lustrous credentials, and the corrosive effect of these attitudes on public discourse. The rising elites ‘come as close as anyone to understanding the full and ever-growing complexity of our technical civilization. They are trained in science, and it is scientists who have inherited the earth.’ Their superior intellect and education give them little reason or occasion to engage in serious discussion with those who lack a college degree (p. 116).”   Through  the DIT lens, once again, it is Adam Smith’s arrogance of self-love in full view, and it must be tamped down by the moral sentiment, as in walking-in-the-shoes-of-the-people-with-less-talent-and-effort and asking:  how would I wish to be treated? It is morally arbitrary --- arrogant --- to believe one deserves what one has because of talent and effort.

Sandel quotes Young again:   “… ‘one of our characteristic modern problems… is that some members of the meritocracy … have become so impressed with their own importance as to lose sympathy with the people whom they govern… (with some meritocrats)… so tactless that even people of low caliber have been quite unnecessarily offended.’   Sandel then points to the 2016 campaign, and the Hillary Clinton claim that “… half of Donald Trump’s supporters were ‘a basket of deplorables’ … (p. 116).” DIT lens here, as in once again, meritocracy leads to the arrogance of self-love and not enough in the realm of tamping it down. A meritocratic system is inherently lacking in cognitive and affective empathy, and failing in moral judgment to bring it into play. And, it crashes the system, because under the meritocratic system of self-love at the top, “… the inferior man has no ready buttress for his self-regard (Sandel quoting Young, p. 118).”  It leads to political chaos in the form of a populist movement by the “inferior man” --- the many who see the few at the top, the meritocratic elite, as morally arbitrary as in not really deserving their wealth, power and influence --- and the authoritarian autocrat who senses it and promises (without regard for reality) to fix it. It is happening, as represented in Brexit in the UK with Boris Johnson and in MAGA in the United States with Donald Trump. 

Sandel points out that: “One way of thinking about what makes for a just society is to ask what kind of society you would choose if you did not know whether you would grow up in a rich family or a poor one. By this standard, most people would agree that a meritocracy with truly equal opportunity is more just than an aristocracy. But for the moment, put the question of justice aside and consider another feature of the two unequal societies we have imagined. Suppose you knew in advance whether you would land on top or on the bottom. Which of these two societies would you rather live in if you were rich, and which would you prefer if you were poor? (p. 113)”

Problem is, “… the meritocratic ideal is flawed because it ignores the moral arbitrariness of talent and inflates the moral significance of effort…(p. 123)”   Through the DIT lens, as soon as talent and effort are turned into desert --- “I deserve what I have because of my talent and effort” --- which is all about the arrogance of self-love in the background of self-interest, that system becomes unjust. It tilts too far toward the self-interest and exclusive focus on individual good, and sets aside the shared other-interest represented in the common good.  It addresses only incentive and sets aside the ethic.  It sees only the profane and sets aside the sacred. In fact, even worse, it accords the profane as being sacred, not seeing it is about striking balance in the joint profane&sacred, individual&common good.

Sandel finishes out: “… it remains to ask what alternative conceptions of justice are available—and what notions of freedom and desert they offer instead (p 123).” DIT would suggest such a system would see the jointness in the individual&common good, and not denigrate either one.

HEALTH AND WEALTH

Points to the prosperity gospel preachers.  In DIT terms, the profane is made sacred by same.  Making lots of money is now sacred, as though one is favored by God. Health and wealth are for the favored, and, the less fortunate, well, said people fell out of favor with God. It is rationalized, highly contestable claim that path 0G is given by God, while God is really all about path 0M. No luck is involved.  The fortuitous gift of talent and the ability to work hard is denied as having any relevance. The prosperity gospel is meritocratic to the core.

It is used by Conservatives to reduce support for health care insurance, as people deserve to be unhealthy because of choices.  People who are sick have to pay higher health care premiums than the self-deserving healthy.  The notion of luck, the fortune of good health is denied.  People deserve what they get, period. As DIT makes clear, there is no empathy here. It also implicitly denies the role of the common good, as in a healthier population means a better life for everyone.

LIBERAL PROVIDENTIALISM

Praise and blame view of health and wealth leaves nothing to luck. All about choices.  Celebrates mastery and control, and meritocratic hubris… doing God’s work.  Everyone else are to blame for their own choices. Claims of conservatives and libertarians often rest here.

Liberals make the same mistake. America is righteous. America is good.  America is great because it is good.  Yet, morally admirable is not necessarily great, nor the other way around. Claim of divine mandate is questionable.

Notes how claims of divine support leads to meritocratic hubris. Being good in the eyes of God makes for wealth. 

THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

America is great because it is good: Hurricanes are a sign of sin.  If might owned to virtue, we have to assume it is true for individuals.  Causes a real challenge for those who want to tax the rich.   Egalitarian liberals emphasize the luck and circumstance.  Arbitrary things separate winners and losers. So, cannot apply it to nations, either. Lot of it is luck, circumstance.

The 1980s and 1990s, liberals accepted the critiques of the welfare state, including eligibility for help.  Sought to tie payments to personal responsibility.

The Right Side of History now regularly brought out by politicians, which holds little water, as history does what history does.

As Sandel points to “… two problems with arguing from history before it happens. First, predicting how things will turn out is notoriously tricky. Ousting Saddam Hussein did not bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East. … Second, even if history’s course could be predicted, it offers no basis for moral judgment. As things turned out, Putin not Yeltsin was on the right side of history, at least in the sense that his autocratic way of governing Russia has prevailed (p. 53). 

THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE

Some justify the claim as in thinking longer term, as in history bends toward justice. It is implicitly claimed that “… history unfolds in a way that is directed by God, or by a secular bent toward moral progress and improvement …  Quoting Martin Luther King., “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice (p. 53).” It is back to providential faith, again, as in stay on the right of side with God, as in people choosing to do so, do the meritocratic thing, then one wins.  The fortuitous nature of it all is denied. Problem is, while it can perhaps give hope for the down trodden, it also provides for meritorious hubris at the top, as though said individuals are doing the just thing.

Sandel points to the time when the Berlin wall came down, and “many in the West (came) to assume that history had vindicated their model of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. Empowered by this assumption, they promoted a neoliberal version of globalization that included free-trade agreements, the deregulation of finance, and other measures to ease the flow of goods, capital, and people across national boundaries. They confidently expected that the expansion of global markets would increase global interdependence, lessen the likelihood of war among nations, temper nationalist identities, and promote respect for human rights. The salubrious effects of global commerce and new information technologies might even loosen the grip of authoritarian regimes and coax them in the direction of liberal democracy (p. 55).”  Not.

As is predictable using DIT, not enough attention paid to building the underlying institutions of the Market Forum, building up shared other-interest in the common good reflected in the Other Forums of a democracy styled system led to authoritarian takeover of many of the former Soviet Union countries.  Russia is now an Authoritarian Nationalism with little in the way of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism in play.