So I kinda did this somewhat in my last article, but I wanted to give my final thoughts separately.
In short, good book, kind of a meh ending from my own ideological perspective.
We do have a meritocracy problem. He described the issues with our political system well and expanded on a lot of trends that, for example, Thomas Frank talked about, with the democrats going toward the meritocratic elite and selling out the working class, and the republicans being driven by resentment politics.
And I myself can honestly say, given my own unique experience, I've experienced similar things. I really think there is a segment of democratic politics these days that just doesnt give a crap if people are left behind and suffer. They're behind the neoliberal project, they're catering to the wealthy and successful, and they'd rather flaunt privilege politics in the face of anyone who complains than admit there's a problem or address it.
I also think there is a segment of republican politics that has been left behind and has become resentful.
It shouldnt be this way. Republicans are historically the party of success and meritocracy, while democrats are the party of the poor and downtrodden. Our modern political dividing lines are reversed from where they should be, and this is why our politics are screwed. As I keep saying we entered the worst possible timeline in 2016, and it really didnt have to be this way.
And yes, belief in meritocracy is part of it. The "winners" of the economy believe they won and look down on the losers, and the losers end up being sore losers and end up resenting the rich. As I said, I feel like people take ideas like work ethic and meritocracy too seriously. They are important concepts to motivate people to do the socially necessary labor, yes, but they need to be tempered with human centered capitalism, the idea that the point of the economy is the people, and that these ideas are only means to an end. The reason why meritocracy and work ethic are both somewhat important is because without them, we'd have no motivation. But at the same time, we shouldnt just let these ideas take on a life of their own where they kind of become the very point of the economy. As Andrew Yang would say, this can lead to inhuman outcomes.
The economy is cruel and harsh if left to its own devices. it works, but it's terrifying for its lack of humanity in its efficiency. It will literally just go full social darwinist and be like "yeah you should be left to die" if you dont prove yourself to be productive enough if you're not a winner. And given my own research into the structure of the economy, given our society will always structurally punish the bottom with poverty and misery, applying work ethic and meritocracy in an absolutist fashion is quite cruel.
So my solution? Don't do that. Deemphasize the concepts. Recognize they only exist to serve a greater end. And focus on that end.
But...this is where he faceplants. Toward the end of the book, rather than shifting away from meritocracy and work ethic somewhat (while recognizing their functionalist value), he ends up pushing for returning to the dignity of work and all of that feel good nonsense I hate. I mean, let's face it, my solution to this mess is that we shouldn't focus on work as much. Work is a means to an end, we should stop treating it as an end, its fine for some level of inequality to exist to serve to motivate people, and we need the pretense of meritocracy to do so. But at the end of the day, I believe that rather than focusing on the dignity of work, we need to start moving toward giving people dignity regardless of their work contribution. Everyone (who is an american citizen at least) should be seen as valuable, as the end of the economy. Every member should be given a minimum standard of living, and be treated with dignity. Rather than doubling down on work and work ethic and contribution, we should treat the country kinda like a big company, where everyone is a share holder. We should celebrate the elimination of work. We should pay people dividends as a member of this great society. The amount should go up based on how much or little motivation to work is needed. And ideally, since, as society advances, it should be able to do far more with far less, we should try to move away from work.
But this guy sees things a little different. He believes we need work for social cohesion, that all of us need to feel like we contributed to feel good and blah blah blah. And uh, yes, while lots and lots of people are suffering due to a lack of work and purposelessness that it provides, they're suffering, in my opinion at least, because we basically brainwashed them to believe work contribution is everything and youre a POS if you dont work. And as it turns out, when people are made useless and redundant in a society in which we value work so highly, people are going to take that personally.
We gotta keep in mind, our system is only 200-250 years old. And people had to be driven kicking and screaming into it. And that was a rough process. 200 years ago, people very seriously talked of overturning capitalism. People had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the factories, and our societies were very punitive to people to force them to work. We literally beat the work ethic into people. This caused massive societal disruption, leading to the destruction of old ways of life, and quite frankly, people wanted them back. They longed for the past days of the past system where things just worked and we experienced a massive amount of anomie in the process.
Nowadays, people long for the factories like people 200 years ago longed to go back to the guild system. And the same energy of ludditeism is present in our society. Not both from the right but from the left. For all the talk some on the left talk about capitalist realism, the idea that the idea of capitalism is so entrenched in our society that we cant imagine life without it, the real problem is work realism. Peoples' minds are so stunted by this work nonsense that even when faced with the idea of being able to get away from work, they find the prospect scary because it's all they know. So they just keep going on about how we need to go back to some form of the good old days, not realizing that those old days were never that great and had their own issues too.
I mean, in the 1960s and 1970s, people were realizing that work wasnt the end all be all of success and we needed a UBI to truly end poverty. That's still true. It's just that neoliberalism has so degraded the situation from there that we just wanna go back to that without thinking about its problems, and without thinking whether a better way is possible.
Another issue I have with this book is the idea that he focuses so much on college being the big divider. I mean, the problem with this guy's book is he overapplies his theory of meritocracy being the big issues to the point that he literally sees the entire left right dynamic as educated vs uneducated. As if the problem is what he calls credentialism and the need for a college degree and those with degrees holding it over those who don't.
But reality is complex, and theres a lot more to the situation than that. There is a problem with liberal hubris among the successful and educated, but college also doesnt guarantee success, and those same liberals will talk down to leftists and further left liberals like socdems the same way. I mean, just think of your typical "bernie bro", when the name is invoked, you think of a white male 20-something with a college degree who is overread on political theory, and who doesnt understand the very real "political realities" that they want to beat into people. They imply such people are racist, sexist and privileged, and they always lecture and talk down to such people like they dont understand how the world works either.
On the flip side, the anti education rhetoric on the right is not due to meritocracy. Many on the right want to go to college for the credentials. They just dislike how "liberal" edcuation is. Like when you go to college, they teach you things like critical theory, and evolution, and these guys are anti intellectual in part because it goes against their fundamentalist religious worldview, that doesnt value science as highly, nor free thinking, and is steeped in religious and conservative values.
Like I went to a christian school in high school. I see where they come from. They teach science and believe it when it suits them, but when it contradicts their worldview, like on climate change, or creationism, or anything to do with sociology or critical theory, all of the sudden they're blah blah blah cant year you.
There really is a deeper ideological and epistemological divide there that isnt just about merit. It transcends merit. But it does lead to a system where the education system leans left, and the right becomes distrustful of it. While this is correlated with the divide, i think he oversells the connection here. Many on the right value meritocracy and success in their own right in their own terms. Heck the right is, in some ways, inherently more meritocratic since theyre more traditionally free market. The problem is the culture war, which has spilled over from just religion and is now bringing race back into the discussion in a big way.
And as I said, the left loves to use identity politics as it fits their meritocratic liberal ideals of meritocracy, without threatening the existing economic order in a bigger way (such as those on the left would want), and the right is just going full on white hot rage in terms of resentment politics, not just toward the successful elite, but toward minorities.
So it's complicated IMO.
Still, when you write a book like this, maybe sometimes you try to oversell your points. You try to interpret EVERYTHING through meritocracy when in reality it's not just that, but other things as well. Reality is complicated, you can have correlations that arent causations, or even are only partially related causally. He finds an interesting correlation and then goes full on r=1 mode (basically implying a perfect correlation when in reality r might = 0.5 or something (an imperfect correlation).
Other than that, it's a decent book. I did learn some things from it. I do think that in order to sell my own ideas i might have to address these subjects a bit better than I have in the past. Between this and the work ethic book we're definitely seeing a conservative worldview come into focus that seems to believe that for the sake of the system, some people just have to suffer, and it can be hard to forget, due to being in my own head for so long, that gee, maybe they don't, and maybe we should address these questions a bit better. Like, things that i take for granted in my own worldview might need to be explained in more baby terms for people who havent had as much exposure in my worldview. If that makes sense at all.
But yeah, that's my thoughts on the book. I give it like a 7.5/10.
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