#205 — The Failure of Meritocracy

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Daniel Markovits about the problems with meritocracy. They discuss the nature of inequality in the United States, the disappearance of the leisure class, the difference between labor and capital as sources of inequality, the way the education system amplifies inequality, the shrinking middle class, deaths of despair, differing social norms among the elite and the working class, the ethics of taxation, scales of philanthropy, universal basic income, the need for a wealth tax, the relationship between meritocracy and political polarization, the illusion of earned advantages, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast.
0:08.0	This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently
0:13.4	on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing partial episodes of the podcast.
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0:23.0	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with
0:27.5	other subscriber-only content. And as always, I never want money to be the reason why
0:33.0	someone can't listen to the podcast. So if you can't afford a subscription, there's
0:37.1	an option at samherris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those requests,
0:42.8	no questions asked.
0:43.8	Okay, well, today is a deep dive into wealth inequality and the underlying problem of
0:59.5	our notion of meritocracy. Wealth inequality is something that I've been worried about.
1:05.6	For quite some time, I think I first started speaking and writing about it in 2010, about
1:13.3	a year or so after the financial crisis. I wrote a couple of blog posts. I think the
1:19.6	first was a New Year's resolution for the rich and then how rich is too rich. And it's
1:27.0	come up a few times on the podcast before. I never really questioned the norm of meritocracy,
1:35.2	however. And I haven't really thought much about the way our system of higher education
1:40.0	has become a perpetual motion machine of inequality. But my guest today on the podcast has,
1:48.1	today I'm speaking with Daniel Markovitz and his book is the meritocracy trap, how America's
1:54.8	foundational myth feeds inequality, dismantles the middle class, and devours the elite. And
2:02.8	Daniel is a professor of law at Yale. And as you'll hear, he's thought a lot about these
2:07.6	issues. We talk about the nature of inequality in the US, the disappearance of the leisure
2:14.4	class, the way the rich now tend to work harder, at least as measured by time than anyone
	...

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