Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard philosophy professor, whose lectures on justice attract huge enrollments and audiences on YouTube, has written a book that can be viewed as a companion piece to Thomas Piketty’s books on income inequality. Sandel limns and critiques the meritocratic ideology that supports and sustains economic and social inequality. He shows the social harm it does, mainly in giving rise to the angry populism that is evident in many countries of the West. Taken together, market-driven globalization and the meritocratic conception of success have, he states, unraveled moral ties. Meritocratic sorting and the notion of “I deserve, he/she does not” have eroded the social bonds and civic attachments necessary to achieve the common good. In sum, Sandel presents a strong argument against the belief that equal opportunity is morally equivalent to social equality.
The Tyranny of Merit
