The Book Club: is meritocracy a trap?

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🗓️ 6 November 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In his new book The Meritocracy Trap Daniel advances an argument that will seem startling to partisans of Left and Right alike: that meritocracy isn’t the solution to our social and political discontents, but the central part of the problem. Our notion that hard work and proven ability should be the route to wealth and success has, he says, created a miserable underclass and a comparably miserable overclass — and is responsible for a damaging and eventually unsustainable reorganisation of Western economies. Among other sophisticated questions, Sam asks him: how so? And: aren’t you sounding a bit like a Marxist, there, Mr Yale Professor?

The Book Club, what used to be known as Spectator Books, is a series of literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith, The Spectator's Literary Editor. Hear past episodes of The Book Club here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before you start listening to this podcast, a reminder that we have a special subscription offer.
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0:10.3	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher if you'd like to get this offer.
0:27.3	Hello and welcome to The Spectator Books podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.
0:34.4	This week, I'm joined by Daniel Markovitz, who is the Guido Calabresi, if I hope I'm pronouncing that right, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, which is an position in an organization that is so elite
0:41.6	that it makes our own Supreme Court look like bumbling amateurs.
0:46.4	And yet, he's just written a book called The Meritocracy Trap, which says that Meritocracy
0:51.2	is not a good thing.
0:53.7	Daniel, how come? How can meritocracy be anything other than a good
0:57.6	thing? First of all, thanks very much for being here. And second, the question is completely natural
1:02.5	because, in a way, meritocracy has become our age's literal common sense. We disagree about
1:08.8	almost everything, but we seem to agree that it's right that people
1:13.0	should get ahead based on their own accomplishments, not on their parents' social class, not on
1:17.0	their race, not on their gender, and so on. And we think that because it seems on the one hand
1:22.9	to promote those who have the most capacity, so it's efficient, and also it gives everybody
1:27.3	a fair shot
1:27.8	at success. But what's happened in fact is that this force, which was introduced as a leveling
1:33.6	force, has become the principal driver of inequality. And it's become really what it was designed
1:40.7	to defeat. It's a new kind of aristocracy, only now it's based on schooling
1:44.6	rather than breeding.
1:46.1	Yeah. And what was it that sort of set you on the path to writing this book? Because there is a sort
1:50.8	of light bulb moment that you describe early on. Well, there is, you know, there are two light bulb
	...

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