Conclusion: Merit and the Common Good

Tells the story of Jackie Robinson, who went on to hit more home runs than Babe Ruth, and how the bat of meritocracy played for Robinson’s success, at the top.   So, the claim is that opportunity is everything.   Sandel denies that claim, and says we need to go beyond opportunity.   Through a DIT lens, focusing only on the meritocratic pursuit of self-interest on path 0G, with the opportunity to pursue that self-interest, is not enough.  Sandel points to the need to also see and seek the common good, which is to see path 0M.

BEYOND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

Going beyond equality of opportunity is to give a different frame to equality, as in meaning each person feeling and being part of something bigger than just every individual focusing on self-interest.  It is about social cohesion, social bonds and civic attachments, the solidarity, all part of the common good … and in theological and religious framing, the grace with God.  As DIT frames it, the common good is about shared with the other-interest, with God if one believes in such things, and everyone else.  So, merit pertains to the individual good on path 0G, and the shared with the other-interest, the grace on the common good path 0M. 

Moving beyond the opportunity to operate on path 0G, the focus shifts to finding a homeostatic, joint balance on some path 0Z. Merit ---  including not only talent, but also the effort, the hard work --- in the self-interest idea of “I deserve it” is not enough.  It is about the jointly operant merit&grace, using the latter term to represent being part of something, welcomed into it, no matter one’s merit. Empathy must play a role. Through empathy, even the lowest talent and/or  lowest effort people are wrapped into the solidarity, each person having the liberty and freedom, dignity and equality to be and to do. Ego-based disdain held in the meritorious hubris at the top for the people at the bottom disappears into a sense of solidarity, a shared with the other-interest across the entire spectrum.

Sandel wants to frame the matter as  “… a broad equality of condition that enables those who do not achieve great wealth or prestigious positions to live lives of decency and dignity—developing and exercising their abilities in work that wins social esteem, sharing in a widely diffused culture of learning, and deliberating with their fellow citizens about public affairs (p. 223).”  Perhaps.  So, the “condition” is a widely shared other-interest in a common good, as in we are all in this together, all travelers on the same Spaceship Earth.

Sandel quotes a R. H. Tawney: “Social well-being … depends upon cohesion and solidarity. It implies the existence, not merely of opportunities to ascend, but of a high level of general culture, and a strong sense of common interests. Individual happiness does not only require that men should be free to rise to new positions of comfort and distinction; it also requires that they should be able to lead a life of dignity and culture, whether they rise or not.… (p. 224).” The life of dignity and culture --- no matter one’s talent and/or the effort put in --- is lived on some path 0Z, not the meritocratic path 0G.

Sandel also quotes a James Truslow Adams:  “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position (p. 224).” Fortuitous circumstance can also include the luck of being born with a talent and an ambition to succeed.  Point is,  no matter what fortuitous circumstance contributed to the opportunity to take path 0G, it needs to be tempered into seeking a path 0Z. 

DEMOCRACY AND HUMILITY        

   

On democracy:  “If democracy is simply economics by other means, a matter of adding up our individual interests and preferences, then its fate does not depend on the moral bonds of citizens. A consumerist conception of democracy can do its limited work whether we share a vibrant common life or inhabit privatized enclaves in the company of our own kind. But if the common good can be arrived at only by deliberating with our fellow citizens about the purposes and ends worthy of our political community, then democracy cannot be indifferent to the character of the common life (p. 225).” 

Through the DIT lens, democracy must not only provide the freedom and liberty to express a talent with hard work to serve the individual good on path 0G, but also means a lot of talk, talk, talk among everyone to find and support the common good on path 0M. And, naturally expressing a talent with hard work also contributes to the common good, but each person must acknowledge the common good also contributes to the individual good, as the DIT lens makes clear.  It is about a joint expression of individual&common good, each essential to the other. 

The Sandel point about it not being a mere summing up of individual good on path 0G means that path0G&path0M, individual&common good arise jointly, are not separable, as represented in DIT by the overlapping isocurves in Figure 1. So, it is not a simple summation: The interaction also counts.  It is also a point to how SIT (Single Interest Theory in mainstream Microeconomics) claims the common good is just the summation of the individual good on path 0G, in effect presuming without empirical test that path 0M is the same as path 0G. Again, it presumes the profane on path 0G is sacred.

Sandel continues:  “The meritocratic conviction that people deserve whatever riches the market bestows on their talents makes solidarity an almost impossible project (p. 225).”  Yes: It is a profane claim about only path 0G in view, and ignores the sacred path  0M.  Sandel points to the need for humility to temper the sense that what one has is somehow deserved.  Said humility leads to a “less rancorous, more generous public life (p. 225).” Humility leads to path 0Z.