3 The Rhetoric of Rising

Sep 7

5 min read

Success is something we earn. Freedom and deservingness go hand in hand. Success a sign of virtue. Empowering. Responsible for your own destiny. Dark side is less likely to have empathy-with people who “failed.” Makes meritocracy destructive of commonality. Hard to see ourselves in the shoes of the other. Responsible for our own fate. Deserve what we get. People on top and those on the bottom landed where they belong.

So, have focused on equality of opportunity, not equality in a group solidarity.

STRIVING AND DESERVING

Sandel listened to his Harvard students. Said students evermore believe to be deserving, beginning in 1990s, success of own doing, something earned. Assumed due to Reagan Revolution. Finds it is spread across the political spectrum. Most voice conviction they merit their admission to Harvard. It is not luck. Admission to elite colleges ever more daunting.

Adolescent years are a battle ground of fevered striving. Advanced placement courses. SAT tutoring. Internships. Heavy involvement in extracurricular. Difficult to emerge without believing have earned it. Experience makes them meritocrats. Believe they deserve it. Not just an American phenomenon. See no moral limits to markets. Rich people are meritorious so deserve to live longer. Prosperity gospel belief. Notion that those who prosper deserve it. It all unfolds agains the background of a hyperactive market operating in the background.

MARKETS AND MERIT

Refers to China launching market reforms in the 1980s, like did Thatcher and Reagan. Markets are about utility.. create incentives… free to choose value on goods. Prompted meritocratic rationale, people give people what they deserve. Market outcomes reward effort. Notes how center-left accepted the Market from the center-right, sought to soften hardest features. But, still accepted the Market as the core. The left did push for education, child care, health care, so everyone could compete on equal terms. Fairness and productivity. Liberal argument also gestured to making people able to compete equal strictly on talent and effort.

Personal responsibility also came into view. Also, the rhetoric rising came into play. Animated political argument. Contributed the populist rejection.

THE RHETORIC OF RESPONSIBILITY

Used to argue about solidarity in the liberal tradition. Since 1980s now less about solidarity and now focused on lower echelons are responsible for their state, meritocratic assumptions in play. People had to help only people whose misfortune was not due to their own choice. Through no fault of their own. Begins as trope of generosity. Has a harsh side. Victims deserve our health. People who did something, have no responsibility to help them. Reagan used the phrase a lot. But, Dems later started using it, too. Implicitly distinguished between the deserving and non-deserving.

Responsibility was hooked to rising. Demand more responsibility. Expect something for nothing. Self-reliance and self-making. Acquire education and skills. Everyone has responsibility to rise to their talents and effort can take them.

Welfare restricted to those needy due to no fault of their own. Demanded welfare recipients to work. Meritocratic representation in the politics of both left and right. Everybody was to seize their opportunities. It is connected to meritocratic understandings. Have moved away from responsibility to take care of the other, as in looking to the common good.

AS FAR AS YOUR TALENTS WILL TAKE YOU

Equal opportunity and upward mobility was always part of the American Dream. The slogan is relatively new. Prominent since Reagan. Individual merit became the focus. Used it to argue for tax cuts (so, could not pay for the common good). American dream became work hard and play by the rules. Bipartisan rhetorical reflex. Obama became attached to it. College education became the vehicle of upward mobility. Everyone goes to college. Everyone takes responsibility. Everyone can get ahead. Pointed toward meritocracy. Take responsibility. Success will be there own doing.

GETTING WHAT YOU DESERVE

Language of merit and deserving became ubiquitous throughout the American culture. Deservingness related to meritocratic thinking, like made a market for motivational tapes. I deserve infused popular culture. Language of merit and desert became more common.

Leading Anglo-Americans philosophers revived the case of “luck egalitarians.” So, the lucky would have to take care of the people who had bad luck, no responsibility for it. Those not taking responsibility, deserved nothing. Reagan used “you deserve” more than any other president.

The “you deserve” became the standard in political discourse. Faith in meritocracy became standard fare. It was to be based on merit not aristocracy.

POPULIST BACKLASH

Upper mobility idea lost its luster. Trump never used it. Blunt talk of winners and losers, and promise to MAGA. Populist antipathy toward meritocratic elites helped elect Trump, and passed Brexit, and populist parties. Less interested in upward mobility, resenting experts, resented elities at the top, while people down the ladder were resentful …some hostility toward immigrants… but, main issue: The top looked down at the people lower on the income ladder. Did not notice that people stuck at the bottom, …rhetoric of rising was a taunt, insulting, rather than inspiring. Did not see it as a project to help opportunity…. Had accepted the hard feedback of the market …

Trump supporters see stalled mobility. The meritocratic system had already created a class system, and it is essentially impossible to rise upwardly in it. The system has also eroded solidarity where the kind of work the blue collar does is disparaged. Insisting on a college degree demeans the people without said degree. And, experts disempower ordinary citizens, losing the sense of control over their own destiny.

CAN YOU MAKE IT IF YOU TRY?

No. Upward mobility rings hollow, especially since the switch to almost complete focus on the Market Forum in the early 1980s. The meritocratic system falls short. It has led to a class system of the haves and have nots. People at the bottom working hard cannot advance. Meritocratic ranking has already been finished, and most have been left behind. Only 3 in 10 at the bottom say poverty is due to the lack of effort. Leads to the harsh side of meritocracy, with the hubristic view at the top declaring that essentialy everyone at the bottom are lacking in effort. The claim is not based in fact, and the disdain also denies the fact that the successful at the top also depend on the shared common good with the bottom. Also, people at the top have a lot of luck, and fortuitous circumstance. Europeans see their life circumstance due to things outside their control. Americans tend to believe it is within own control. Yet, the ability to rise through effort and grit no longer works. It does not work in America anymore. Few make it from the bottom to the top. Very few live out the rags to riches story. Less mobility in the US than in Germany, Spain, many countries. In the US and UK the children of the meritocratic elite at top are quite entrenched, virtually never moving down, and few at the bottom are able to move up the ladder to join same. Danish and Canadian people on the lower rungs can still rise… the America Dream lives there, not in the US. Far better chances in China of living such a Dream than in the US.