The Tyranny of Merit
What's Become of the Common Good?
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Narrated by:
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Michael J. Sandel
About this listen
This program is read by the author.
The world-renowned philosopher and author of the best-selling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?
These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens - leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.
World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy fosters among the winners and the indignities it inflicts on those left behind. And he offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"This is a remarkable book about justice. In his unique and powerful moral voice, Michael Sandel digs at the roots of our divisions, dissects the causes of inequality, and dismantles the lazy orthodoxy of those on the left and the right. Accessible and profound, The Tyranny of Merit is a revelatory assessment of pervasive unfairness in our society, driven in part by a naïve and myopic reliance on the notion of merit. In a time of easy rhetoric and thoughtless tribalism, this provocative book is a must-read for anyone who still cares about the common good. You will catch yourself wondering, again and again, 'Why have I never thought of it that way?' No good faith reader will come away from this book unchanged." (Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and author of Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law)
"Astute, insightful, and empathetic, Sandel exposes the cruelty at the heart of some of our most beloved myths about success. A must-read for anyone struggling to understand populist resentment, and why, for many Americans, the American Dream has come to feel more like a taunt than a promise. This book is just what we need right now." (Tara Westover, author of Educated)
"The Tyranny of Merit deftly exposes the flaws and fallacies of meritocratic philosophy. In lucid, illuminating prose, Sandel makes a compelling case for uprooting inequality and building a fairer society shaped by true principles of justice. A seminal work." (Darren Walker, president, Ford Foundation)
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Critic reviews
“Astute, insightful, and empathetic, Sandel exposes the cruelty at the heart of some of our most beloved myths about success. A must-read for anyone struggling to understand populist resentment, and why, for many Americans, the American Dream has come to feel more like a taunt than a promise. This book is just what we need right now.” (Tara Westover, author of Educated)
“The Tyranny of Merit deftly exposes the flaws and fallacies of meritocratic philosophy. In lucid, illuminating prose, Sandel makes a compelling case for uprooting inequality and building a fairer society shaped by true principles of justice. A seminal work.” (Darren Walker, president, Ford Foundation)
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Not what I expected at all!
- By Chi on 05-22-23
By: Edward Skidelsky
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The People vs. Democracy
- Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
- By: Yascha Mounk
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
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The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy - individual rights and the popular will - are at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."
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Not worth it
- By DailyShopper on 06-07-18
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The Myth of the Rational Voter
- Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
- By: Bryan Caplan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book.
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Refreshing
- By Lyle Wincentsen on 05-12-11
By: Bryan Caplan
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Dear White America
- Letter to a New Minority
- By: Tim Wise
- Narrated by: Tim Wise
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, and a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.
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A Primer on Racism for White People
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By: Tim Wise
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The Fourth Revolution
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- By: John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.
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A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
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Eurotrash
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Europe has been declining under the weight of its antiquated institutions, economic fatigue, moral anemia, and cultural surrender. Yet American politicians, technocrats, academics, and pundits argue, with increasing popularity, that Americans should look across the Atlantic for solutions to the nation’s problems, including on issues like health care, the welfare state, immigration, and a bloated bureaucracy.
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Details on many ways Europe is lacking
- By Alicia B. on 11-15-21
By: David Harsanyi
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A Time to Build
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Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription.
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Incisive and Illuminating
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Right Here, Right Now
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The world is in flux. Disruptive technologies, ideas, and politicians are challenging business models, norms, and political conventions everywhere. How we, as leaders in business and politics, choose to respond matters greatly. Right Here, Right Now sets out a pragmatic, forward-looking vision for leaders in business and politics by analyzing how economic, social, and public policy trends - including globalized movements of capital, goods, and services, and labor - have affected our economies, communities, and governments.
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Excellent book on Politics for Canadians AND Americans
- By John Fernandes on 10-19-18
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Identity
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In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.
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Robotic narrator
- By Shahin on 09-19-18
By: Francis Fukuyama
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The Battle
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America faces a new culture war. It is not a war about guns, abortions, or gays; rather it is a war against the creeping changes to our entrepreneurial culture, the true bedrock of who we are as a people. The new culture war is a battle between free enterprise and social democracy. Many Americans have forgotten the evils of socialism and the predations of the American Great Society's welfare-state programs.
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Right wing
- By John on 12-22-10
By: Arthur C. Brooks
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Discrimination and Disparities
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Discrimination and Disparities challenges believers in such one-factor explanations of economic outcome differences as discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. It is listenable enough for people with no prior knowledge of economics. Yet the empirical evidence with which it backs up its analysis spans the globe and challenges beliefs across the ideological spectrum.
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Hard Pill To Swallow - I’m better for it
- By Charles on 01-14-19
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Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism
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In his controversial study of America's giving habits, Arthur C. Brooks shatters stereotypes about charity in America - including the myth that the political Left is more compassionate than the Right. Brooks, a preeminent public policy expert, spent years researching giving trends in America, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he identifies the forces behind American charity.
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Let's talk truth!
- By Jeff on 09-02-12
By: Arthur C. Brooks
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Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?
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Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.
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A fun historical analysis of Pirate political systems
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First published in response to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has since become one of the defining texts in classic libertarian thought. Challenging and ultimately rejecting liberal, socialist, and conservative agendas, Nozick boldly asserts that the rights of individuals are violated as a state's responsibilities increase—and the only way to avoid these violations rests in the creation of a minimalist state limited to protection against force, fraud, theft, and the enforcement of contracts.
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joyfully ignorant or joyfully heinous
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What listeners say about The Tyranny of Merit
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- Wisache
- 01-22-21
Interesting thesis. Monotonous reading
I struggled to keep my attention on the (interesting and important) subject due to the very monotonous reading.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-03-21
Digesting and Massaging
I am still digesting this book...lot to digest. In my simple mind I was reminded of when there were a lot of flack about how children ...all children should be given recognition. A child who won a race, competition etc. shouldn't be the only one recognized or awaded...all who participated should be recognized..
I found the parts about how the financial...speculations d ok nvm"t contributors to actual growth depressing and truthful. I as ls I feel higher education has not contributed in teaching g, exposing the minds to CiVIC duty or addressing how common good is an important mor a l and ethical principle we should valye.
As I wrote I am digesting this book like another book "Evil Geniouses" which I found dovetails with this study/ st ory. I liked how the a author commented on Warren Buffett who expressed his bewilderment of Americans not enraged how whe markets were keept the growth of in c one inequality. growing.
Not the origin but movies like Wall Street ushered in the glamourization of Greed and made breaking our concept of a "Social Cintract" acceptable and in a way an essential principle "to get ahead."
I. Hope and wish we can find a way out of this messy nightmare. I understand what was said about "Credentialism" but if one doesn''t even have sense, common sense "Credentials/Degree" doesn't really help one. Can't have d I discussions if th e p series involved doesn't have common sense as a starting point.
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- Nate
- 08-17-22
Exceptionally Well Written and Spoken
Having previously understood that a meritocracy included the best of what democracy had to offer, I came away from this book with a much deeper understanding of the root of meritocracy and the insidiousness it can cause in the losers. Much of the world has stepped away from placing value on labor. Instead, we see a pursuit of higher education by the privileged, who (often with scorn) think little of the laborer. Openly mocking the uneducated is perhaps one of the few tolerated social bigotries, but it is bigotry no less. He speaks against this practice, a practice that has become far too common. He explains the rise of populist and nationalist movements the world over as responses to globalization and the tyranny of merit. On the tax code, his conclusion of eliminating income tax and adding a financial transaction fee on speculative financial instruments is an excellent approach. In many places, in particular the US, the tax code benefits the wealthy. Those who engage in speculative, high speed trading, which provides no actual boon to the economy either in goods produced or jobs created pay only a fraction of the tax placed on the working middle class. The tax code awards those individuals in part because of a misplaced belief that those people at the top have earned their place. I also appreciated his solutions to inequitable college admissions to elite universities, places where legacy students and children of financial donors stand at the front of line. You can put this on 1.8x and understand everything perfectly. Highly recommend. This won’t take long to get through and it’s well worth your time.
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- Silvia Quirino
- 10-30-22
Worth reading it
Good reading, some great data and wow moments. It gets repetitive in the end and too much US reality oriented.
Still worth it! And I recommend.
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- ray e.
- 08-19-23
Hot Dog i Won a Cookie
Mr. Sandel is an insightful man.
I’m a recently retired Local 1 Carpenter out of Chicago.
Loved this book!
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- P. M. Hudson
- 12-01-20
So Much To Consider
I loved this book. I've never considered the problems with meritocracy in this much detail. it helped to organize my own thoughts on the issues. if only everyone would read it, especially our political leaders and the wealthy elite, we could begin to repair the divide between people and restore dignity to so many.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-08-21
Critical work on the polarization which grips our country
Well worth reading and pondering A little slow in the middle third as it overly focuses on meritocracy as it relates to elite colleges
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- Frequent shopper!
- 12-02-21
The lost profound book I have read in a log time.
It forced me and hopefully others to question merit and achievement and how it is also corrosive to our society and the common good.
It points to how to rethink our consumerist society into one that equally honors the dignity of work and equality, the bedrock of a self governing society.
I could not put it down.
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- Laura Allen
- 02-09-22
Fascinating analysis of a serious problem with our culture
We have been brought up to think of meritocracy as intrinsically fair and ethical. Sandel’s analysis shows how this belief is seriously fallacious. He then proposes solutions that would promote a more humane and less divisive society. The analysis minimizes ideological dogma.
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- curious_reader
- 04-10-21
Highly recommending!!! 😃👏👏
One might agree or disagree with author’s ideas but all should take time reading this amazing book, understanding fundamental questions he raises and thinking what should be the answers.
Answers will shape our future.
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