The Tyranny of Merit

What's going on in my America?

For a long time now, I've felt like I've somehow woken up and found myself on the bad side of It's a Wonderful Life, that I've lost my wonderful Bedford Falls and ended up trapped in Pottersville.

Call me naive. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. I lived in a small town. When an elderly person in our neighborhood took sick, the neighbors took in meals. My dad saw the end of the road at the sulfur company he worked for, and he was able to go back to school at night, get his degree, and get a great job that supported him all his life as an accountant. My grandfather was a union leader and he helped lead several strikes at Dow for more money and benefits for the workers. Adults in the neighborhood kept an eye on kids but didn't helicopter-parent them. Our schools and workplaces and places of business were swiftly integrated with people of color and both men and women and we grew up with a diverse variety of friends and acquaintances...

Above all, there was a feeling of hopefulness, that even if things weren't perfect, they were getting better, that people cared about each other and about the world. To paraphrase JFK, our motivation was to ask not for what the world could do for us, but for what we could do for the world.

Now let's move forward forty years.

I look around now and what do I see? Bold out-and-out lying in public discourse. A huge sector of the population that feels it has no part in the conversation. Elected officials who head to warmer climates during an emergency in the state in which they serve. A president who asserts, against all evidence, that the election was stolen from him, and who riles up common people to the extent that they invade the buildings where people meet to form the laws, threatening to kill the leaders of our government. And then lawmaker after lawmaker turns her head from doing what is right, after letting this man say and do anything he wants for four years, and allows this president to walk away. People who ignore scientists and refuse to wear a mask to protect themselves and the vulnerable. Black people who are killed at an extraordinarily high rate by police officers. Immigrants who do most of the hard work in our country and yet are being shut out.The preacher in my town who buys a home in the next community instead of among the people of his congregation because it will have “better resale value.” I could go on and on...

I've sought out books to help me sort all of this out.


Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam

Our Towns: A 100,000 Journey Into the Heart of America by James M. and Deborah Fallows

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks

I shared my thoughts on these books here.

These books were extremely helpful in my understanding of the anger I sense in others as well as in helping me to have good conversations with others. But it's more than just my conversations with others that need help, I think.

I look to these two books:

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich

The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

By page six, Robert B. Reich in The System has already shared this quote from New York magazine's Frank Rich: “Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done little to protect us from the next, but also race relations, health care, education, institutional religion, law enforcement, the physical infrastructure, the news media, the bedrock virtues of civility and community.” Reich goes on to say, “He might have added the environment and our democracy.”

Wow.

Reich looks at the roots of all these problems and he finds the source of the problem in those who control money and, consequently, power, in our country. He quotes activist Greta Thunberg: “If everyone is guilty, then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people—some companies and some decision-makers in particular—have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”

Reich shares some horrifying wealth inequality statistics. “ Between 1980 and 2019, the share of the nation's total household income going to the richest 1 percent more than doubled, while the earnings of the bottom 90 percent barely rose....the share of the total wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent...own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of households combined.” And, worse, “All this has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else.”

Whew. Can we go on? I feel we must.

“As long as they control the purse strings, the oligarchs know there will be no substantial tax increases for them. Instead, their taxes will fall. There will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger....Government will provide even more corporate subsidies, bailouts, and loan guarantees. It will continue to eliminate protections for consumers, workers, and the environment. It will become a government for, of, and by the oligarchy.”

Oh dear.

“If democracy were working as it should, government officials would make the rules roughly according to what most citizens want them to be. They would also take into account the interests of the poor and of minorities, and give them a fair chance to make it as well. The system would be working for all of us. In a vicious cycle, though, the rules are made mainly by those with the power and wealth to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth concentrate at the top, so does political leverage.”

Reich asserts that America is not “suffering a breakdown in private morality. To the contrary, it's burdened by a breakdown in public morality.”

How does Reich suggest that we get out of this mess? He dreams of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the population who come together based on “a common understanding of what it means to be a citizen with responsibilities for the greater good.” He goes on to say, “The reason to fight oligarchy is not just to obtain a larger share of the economic winnings; it is to make democracy function so that we can achieve all the goals we hold in common.” His call to action is, “Democracy will prevail, if we fight for it.”

Michael J. Sandel is also quite bleak in his assessment of America. He arrives at his conclusions about the state of the nation from his years of experience teaching at one of our nation's most revered institutions. Sandel looks at the turbulence among our people, and he, like Reich, believes the problems stem from the divisions between those who control the money and power in our country and those who seem to have none. Sandel shows how our fundamental philosophy of belief in a meritocracy, in a system where those who are smart and powerful deserve to be smarter and more powerful, is flawed. He convincingly shows how closely SAT scores and IQ points are tied to income, how coming from wealth leads to more wealth, how few people in our society move from poor to affluence. It's not enough, he tells us, to simply open the door a little wider, to let in a few more of the poor into opportunities to obtain wealth. It's the underlying philosophy, he says, that must be changed, to strip away both the unwarranted hubris of the haves and the sense of inferiority and failure from the have-nots. Sandel and Reich agree that we need to recenter ourselves on the idea of a common good. Sandel hopes to promote the idea of people as producers rather than consumers, to restore the idea of the dignity of work, and to create policies that allow workers to find good jobs that support strong families and communities. Sandel strongly condemns the financial industry, noting that “much financial activity hinders rather than promotes economic growth.” He would act by “discouraging speculation and honoring productive labor.”

I'm no politician; I'm simply a regular citizen who would like to make things better. These books have helped me understand (a bit) the workings of our complex economy and government and have given me ideas about ways to act to promote our common good. My sense of hopefulness is growing.

At least that's a start.

I made it just over 50% of the way through this book before deciding to move on from it.

I started reading this with the intention of gaining a vocabulary to talk about why diverse and equal opportunity hiring and promotion practices are important in my workplace, but so far the book has been focused on a more macro level about the recent history and rising tensions around inequality in the US and UK, the death of the American dream, and how generational wealth and privilege undermines the idea of a true meritocracy.

All of those ideas are interesting, but I haven't really learned any new insights here if you have been following the news. There's lots of recounting of Trump's presidential run, Brexit, the college admission scandals, etc.

Perhaps it gets more into analysis later, but I have too many other books in my backlog to bother sucking with it to find out.