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The Meritocracy Trap

How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite

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The Meritocracy Trap

Von: Daniel Markovits
Gesprochen von: Fred Sanders
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A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy

It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream.

But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes.

This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

*Includes a PDF of figures and tables. Bildung Politik & Regierungen Soziale Klassen & wirtschaftliche Ungleichheit Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
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This book is really about American 'meritocracy'. The argument,as I understand it, is basically that in the US their is a superordinate, meritocratic elite, whose high salaries are unjust, because their merits are due to meritocratic inheritances, meaning parents having invested heavily in their children's skills and education, giving them an unfair advantage. Because their educations a five or twenty times more expensive, it appears to be so much better. The victims in his narrative is not just the middle class but also this elite, which work an insane amount of hours (at the same time , a bit paradoxically, they also seem to have more time tutoring, talking to and time being with their children), while the middle class, which seems to go around idle, doesn't find the time. How does that add up? I'm sure things could be done differently in the US, but this book doesn't address the question, why this superordinate elite is so productive and rich. Apparently , someone can and wants to pay them these insane sums of money, and it is a poor argument to say that they only get these sums because more labour or middle class way if doing things has been overturned by complexities and technologies. I'm not convinced that the world has not gotten better or richer from the development. It might be true that the American middle class hasn't been the ones to profit the most, but maybe they should up their game. One also get the idea or feeling that. everyone has the right to a decent job, and not just gloomy or glossy jobs. Well, the glossy jobs will always by a scarcity, while what he calls the gloomy jobs probably just are the decent jobs that make civilisation function.
Finally, I found the book to be to repetitive. This is a problem with many American titles, I wonder whether they a paid per word sometimes. His historical account of Yale changing to a meritocratic institution was interesting.

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