Despite their differences, these traditional versions of political meritocracy—from the Confucian to the Platonic to the republican—share the notion that the merits relevant to governing include moral and civic virtue. This is because all agree that the common good consists, at least in part, in the moral education of citizens. Our technocratic version of meritocracy severs the link between merit and moral judgment. In the domain of the economy, it simply assumes that the common good is defined by GDP, and that the value of people’s contributions consists in the market value of the goods or services they sell. In the domain of government, it assumes that merit means technocratic expertise. This can be seen in the growing role of economists as policy advisors, the increasing reliance on market mechanisms to define and achieve the public good, and the failure of public discourse to address the large moral and civic questions that should be at the center of political debate: What should we do about rising inequality? What is the moral significance of national borders? What makes for the dignity of work? What do we owe one another as citizens? This morally blinkered way of conceiving merit and the public good has weakened democratic societies in several ways. The first is the most obvious: Over the past four decades, meritocratic elites have not governed very well. The elites who governed the United States from 1940 to 1980 were far more successful. They won World War II, helped rebuild Europe and Japan, strengthened the welfare state, dismantled segregation, and presided over four decades of economic growth that flowed to rich and poor alike. By contrast, the elites who have governed since have brought us four decades of stagnant wages for most workers, inequalities of income and wealth not seen since the 1920s, the Iraq War, a nineteen-year, inconclusive war in Afghanistan, financial deregulation, the financial crisis of 2008, a decaying infrastructure, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a system of campaign finance and gerrymandered congressional districts that makes a mockery of democracy. Not only has technocratic merit failed as a mode of governance; it has also narrowed the civic project. Today, the common good is understood mainly in economic terms. It is less about cultivating solidarity or deepening the bonds of citizenship than about satisfying consumer preferences as measured by the gross domestic product. This makes for an impoverished public discourse.
Sandel follows up later in his book and shares his views on how the reliance of meritocracy in our political system has crowded out fundamental conversations on morality and the public good. The fact that the economy has become the main focus and is analogous to the common good has impacted our societies by driving a further gap between economic numbers and the actual lives of citizens.
While I might not subscribe to such a “doom and gloom” outlook from Sandel, it is true that the focus on economics via the technocratic merit model might weaken public discourse on many other issues. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that society has made progress on social issues. And while we should always strive to do better, we should not be be overtly critical and overlook any progress in the past decades.
Having such a “doom and gloom” approach does invoke a lot of anxieties in young people and probably leads to the increasingly divisive politics that we see. Yet, it is also a fact the inequality has grown to unprecedented levels, and that we do not seem to be having significant political discourse on this. When the meritocratic ideal is then proposed for the average person to subscribe to, they probably see this disconnect in terms of economic outcomes via inequality and it becomes much harder for them to have that trust in leaders who push the meritocracy ideal.
