{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/9a03fe9e-1ff0-4dcc-b3f6-50bd1f016ea4/1d1b6c57-6ed6-4704-9b84-bb912d7f5dd3?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Michael Sandel on the Case Against Meritocracy","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6195701f2eacc3a36070252a/619570bccb3c660012e3cefa.jpg?height=200","description":"<p>David and Helen talk to the philosopher Michael Sandel about the damage that the idea of rewarding people on merit has done to education, democracy and public life.&nbsp;Why is it wrong to try to match the best students to the best universities?&nbsp;What is credentialism and how has it warped the way work is rewarded?&nbsp;Whatever happened to the idea of the common good?&nbsp;Plus we discuss America's sense of itself as God's chosen nation in the age of Obama and Trump.</p><p><br></p><p>Talking Points:</p><p><br></p><p>Places like Stanford and Harvard have more than 40,000 applicants for 2,000 places. Most of these applicants are qualified.</p><ul><li>Michael thinks that universities should admit students based on a lottery.</li><li>The meritocratic way of thinking about success and social recognition has produced and intensified an epidemic of credentialism.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><li>Should elite universities function as arbiters of opportunity?</li><li>Even going to university hasn’t delivered what people expected.&nbsp;</li><li>How do we translate what we can see is socially and morally wrong about our society into a different way of economically living?</li></ul><p><br></p><p>For decades, we have been told that the solution to inequality is individual upward mobility through higher education.</p><ul><li>The ‘rhetoric of rising’ has run its course.</li><li>How do we affirm and renew the dignity of work?</li></ul><p><br></p><p>What kind of jobs has the shift towards credentialism encouraged?</p><ul><li>There’s a concentration around law and finance, as well as public sector or public administration jobs.</li><li>The financialism of the economy is an important part of this story.</li><li>The divide between winners and losers has deepend.</li><li>It’s not just inequality: the people on top believe that their success is their own doing.</li><li>Michael thinks that the sense of elites looking down on the less credentialed has fueled the anger and resentment that authoritarian populists have exploited.</li><li>Could automation displace credentialism?</li></ul><p><br></p><p>The money people make, or the recognition they receive, is not a measure of their contribution to the common good.</p><ul><li>It’s easy to outsource this kind of moral judgment to markets, but Michael thinks that’s a mistake.</li><li>Can we reconfigure the economy to bring about a better alignment between the contributions people make and the rewards and recognition they receive?</li><li>The pandemic has revealed the importance of jobs that are hugely undervalued, particularly forms of human care.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>There has been a structural, material transformation in Western economies since the 1980s that has gone hand and hand with the rise of credentialism and financialisation.</p><ul><li>Industrial manufacturing employment has gone overseas.</li><li>We are nostalgic about an age that no longer exists, including the role of trade unions, which had power in part because they could disrupt the economy through strikes.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>What happened to the nation as a source of identity and belonging?</p><ul><li>The United States is a providential nation; the same forces of meritocracy can be at work at the national level.</li><li>Is it possible to challenge the sense of providence in American democracy?</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Mentioned in this Episode:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313/313112/the-tyranny-of-merit/9780241407592.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Sandel, <em>The Tyranny of Merit</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/You-Cant-Go-Home-Again/Thomas-Wolfe/9781451650488\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Wolfe, <em>You Can’t Go Home Again</em></a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>Further Learning:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/06/michael-sandel-the-populist-backlash-has-been-a-revolt-against-the-tyranny-of-merit\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Michael in the Guardian: ‘The populist backlash has been a...","author_name":"David Runciman and Catherine Carr"}