Sandel scandalized by meritocracy

Michael Sandel is a Professor at an Ivy League School. Thus, he thinks people care about which School a two term Veep went to over fifty years ago. 

Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university.

Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar but this didn't hurt him any. He came across as folksy.  

This is a potential strength.

Actually, it isn't. Biden comes across as a bit dim- slow Joe. It would help him if he could point at a more distinguished academic record. But just saying smart things in the debate would be enough.

One of the sources of Donald Trump’s political appeal has been his ability to tap into resentment against meritocratic elites.

No. His strength lay in saying that elites were shite at making deals profitable for the American people. They could enrich themselves, sure, but only by being crooked. He was saying, 'I'm a fucking genius. I've got merit coming out of my ass. That's why I've been able to make my own money- of which I have lots and lots, believe you me. Everybody else is either stupid or a two bit crook or a stupid two bit crook. '

By the time of Mr. Trump’s election, the Democratic Party had become a party of technocratic liberalism

No. It had become, in Obama's words, a 'circular firing squad' with 'woke' nutters running amok. This would have been tolerable if the Democrats had put up a fiscally profligate candidate.  

more congenial to the professional classes than to the blue-collar and middle-class voters who once constituted its base.

Because it saw minorities as growing vote bank and thus was viewed as soft on low-skill immigration which hurts the working class but means cheap labour for the better off. 

In 2016, two-thirds of whites without a college degree voted for Mr. Trump, while Hillary Clinton won more than 70 percent of voters with advanced degrees.

The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that low skill immigrants hurt the uneducated but may benefit the better off.  Sandel doesn't draw the obvious conclusion. He thinks all that matters is where one went to School. This is because he is himself an overpaid pedagogue. 

Being untainted by the Ivy League credentials of his predecessors may enable Mr. Biden to connect more readily with the blue-collar workers the Democratic Party has struggled to attract in recent years.

Actually, Biden was always more concerned with blue-collar workers- he is from the Silent Generation, unlike Clinton, Trump, Dubya etc who were boomers- and hopefully this will come through in his pitch for the top job.  

More important, this aspect of his candidacy should prompt us to reconsider the meritocratic political project that has come to define contemporary liberalism.

No it shouldn't. Voters are rational. They vote in accordance with their economic interests- though, of course, they can be fooled. 

There is no 'meritocratic political project'. Pedagogues may say 'this student is meritorious'. Employers soon discover that the fellow is useless. He boomerangs back to the safe space of the Campus. Credentials are useful that way. They are something to fall back on when Life shows you are a cretin.  

Nobody would have any problem with a political philosophy that prevails simply by supplying more skillful and effective statesman and administrators. A meritocracy which is better at governance- i.e. genuinely meritorious- would have made a noticeable difference in promoting its ideals and reversing outcomes it considers unfair. 

At the heart of this project are two ideas: First, in a global, technological age, higher education is the key to upward mobility, material success and social esteem.

No. It is obvious that great natural talent and a highly specialized skill- which may require specialist training- is required for upward mobility.  On the other hand, being a suck-up and doing boring shit year after year, decade after decade, may be enough to keep you on the trajectory of a self-serving, careerist, suck-up piece of shit of a wholly meretricious types. But a global technological shift could fuck you up when you are least able to adapt.

Liberalism is not a meritocratic project. Corporatism might be. Communism may claim to be. Authoritarianism gains legitimacy by adopting a meritocratic guise. But Liberalism is about giving an equal weightage to the views and values of ignorant losers. 

Second, if everyone has an equal chance to rise, those who land on top deserve the rewards their talents bring.

So, Spandel isn't talking about Liberalism at all. He is focused on Rawls's retarded shite about how Society will only tolerate differences in Income if they are necessary to secure the welfare of the lowest. But nobody actually believes that nonsense. It is pure virtue signalling hypocrisy. You didn't see Rawls splitting his royalties with the custodial staff. 

This way of thinking is so familiar that it seems to define the American dream.

But being able to leave billions to your kids too is part of that dream. As is telling Canadians to go fuck a Mountie. 

But it has come to dominate our politics only in recent decades.

In which country has Spandel been living in? Clinton discovered that 'Workfare' was more popular than 'Welfare'. Americans, it seems, has no problem with 'Dynasty' style billionaire lifestyles. But it does want the shit shovellers to shovel more and more shit for the same, or less, money. Why? It is an affluent country. Sandel probably thinks that the flyover states are filled with Okies straggling from soup kitchen to soup kitchen.   

And despite its inspiring promise of success based on merit, it has a dark side.

No kidding! If you study a non STEM subject you become stupider than you would otherwise be. Your lifetime earnings fall.  

Building a politics around the idea that a college degree is a precondition for dignified work and social esteem has a corrosive effect on democratic life.

Coz cretins like Sandel are milling around all over the place gibbering balderdash. 

It devalues the contributions of those without a diploma, fuels prejudice against less-educated members of society,

till you read a Sandel op-ed and compare his views with those of an alcoholic bag lady with no teeth- unless she turns out to be Martha Nussbaum. 

effectively excludes most working people from elective government and provokes political backlash.

This silly man does not get that 'elective government' has to exclude most people from holding office. If there are more candidates than voters, chances are political office isn't going to pay well.  

Here is the basic argument of mainstream political opinion, especially among Democrats, that dominated in the decades leading up to Mr. Trump and the populist revolt he came to represent: A global economy that outsources jobs to low-wage countries has somehow come upon us and is here to stay. The central political question is not to how to change it but how to adapt to it, to alleviate its devastating effect on the wages and job prospects of workers outside the charmed circle of elite professionals.

The answer: Improve the educational credentials of workers so that they, too, can “compete and win in the global economy.” Thus, the way to contend with inequality is to encourage upward mobility through higher education.'

Sandel may be right about the Democrats. They were as stupid as shit. They probably did believe that everybody could have an above average lifestyle.  

The rhetoric of rising through educational achievement has echoed across the political spectrum — from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton.

Whereas Sandel's rhetoric shows that educational achievement in a shite disciplines causes a fall in life-chances.  

But the politicians espousing it have missed the insult implicit in the meritocratic society they are offering: If you did not go to college, and if you are not flourishing in the new economy, your failure must be your own fault.

Sandel misses the insult implicit in his argument. It has to do with how your momma so fat. Are you going to let this little pencil-neck get away with dissing  that morbidly obese cum-bucket?  

It is important to remember that most Americans — nearly two-thirds — do not have a four-year college degree.

Only Norway has a slightly higher percentage. But, since the Nineties, there has been a cult of the dropout turned billionaire. The internet has made College obsolete. 

By telling workers that their inadequate education is the reason for their troubles, meritocrats moralize success and failure and unwittingly promote credentialism — an insidious prejudice against those who do not have college degrees.

Says a College Professor who thinks the great unwashed will warm to Biden because he went to a crap School.  

The credentialist prejudice is a symptom of meritocratic hubris.

To defeat which we must ensure that more bunny rabbits get Doctorates and are appointed to the faculty.  

By 2016, many working people chafed at the sense that well-schooled elites looked down on them with condescension.

I think they chafed at rich people who thought they were moronic losers. They didn't give a toss about where those Richie Riches went to School.  

This complaint was not without warrant. Survey research bears out what many working-class voters intuit: At a time when racism and sexism are out of favor (discredited though not eliminated), credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice.

Very true. Bill Gates gets mocked for being a College dropout wherever he goes. Michael Dell has had several nervous breakdowns. He cried on Oprah about it. David Karp doesn't even have a High School Diploma. He may be a billionaire but people spit on him in the street. A bunch of Vassar girls mocked him mercilessly. When he boasted of the hundreds of millions of dollars he had his in Bank Account, they pushed him to the floor and brutally raped him. The Police refused to charge them when the discovered the boy didn't even have a GED. As Sandel says, Credentialism is the new Jim Crow. When will the madness end?  

In the United States and Europe, disdain for the less educated is more pronounced, or at least more readily acknowledged, than prejudice against other disfavored groups. In a series of surveys conducted in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, a team of social psychologists led by Toon Kuppens found that college-educated respondents had more bias against less-educated people than they did against other disfavored groups. The researchers surveyed attitudes toward a range of people who are typically victims of discrimination. In Europe, this list included Muslims and people who are poor, obese, blind and less educated; in the United States, the list also included African-Americans and the working class. Of all these groups, the poorly educated were disliked most of all.

But Dutch psychologists, ever since the Diederik Stapel scandal, are suspected of fabricating their results. One of Kuppens' paper says- 'We predict that people with lower levels of education identify less with their educational group compared with more highly educated people.' This makes sense. If education wasn't a big part of your life, it can't affect your identity much. Furthermore, if you're a bigot, you probably equate higher education with the privileged group.

Beyond revealing the disparaging views that college-educated elites have of less-educated people,

this may be a proxy for old fashioned bigotry 

the study also found that elites are unembarrassed by this prejudice.

which is what makes it a good proxy 

They may denounce racism and sexism, but they are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.

 Which is cute.

By the 2000s, citizens without a college degree were not only looked down upon; in the United States and Western Europe, they were also virtually absent from elective office.

40 per cent of voters have a college degree. Non Graduate politicians do sometimes have to get their transcripts published simply to prove that they weren't chucked out of College for rape or selling drugs. But the issue here is 'character', not credentials.  

In the U.S. Congress, 95 percent of House members and 100 percent of senators are college graduates. The credentialed few govern the uncredentialed many.

Why? It is because being a Legislator is the sort of job where having a law degree is an advantage. The uncredentialed realize this. That's how come non-Doctors prefer to be treated by Doctors and non-hairdressers prefer to get their hair cut by hair-dressers. This is not an indicator of some terrible Societal malaise.

The number of lawyers has tended to decline because law makers now have more help in that area. On the other hand, other types of expertise have increased in importance. Nevertheless, this is a case of selection bias. The sort of person who wants to be a legislator is also the sort of person who wants an academic credential. It is quite usual to step up from Student Politics to the Grown Up variety.  

It has not always been this way. Although the well-educated have always been disproportionately represented in Congress, as recently as the early 1960s, about one-fourth of our elected representatives lacked a college degree.

Back then, like Harry Truman, you could be a judge or a lawyer without a degree.  

Over the past half-decade, Congress has become more diverse with regard to race, ethnicity and gender, but less diverse with regard to educational credentials and class.

Because educational credentials don't correlate with class. They are Michael Spence type signals.  

One consequence of the diploma divide is that very few members of the working class ever make it to elective office.

More worryingly, no non-politicians are politicians.  

In the United States, about half of the labor force is employed in working-class jobs, defined as manual labor, service industry and clerical jobs. But fewer than 2 percent of members of Congress worked in such jobs before their election.

Because getting elected costs a lot of money.  

Some might argue that government by well-educated university graduates is something to welcome, not regret. Surely we want well-trained doctors to perform our appendectomies. Aren’t highly credentialed leaders best equipped to give us sound public policies and reasoned political discourse?

This is actually a story about signalling. We want ambitious people who are self-confident and prepared to sweat the small stuff and do boring shite and polish relevant apples to represent us. We don't want stoned slackers- at least not since our experience with Dubya.

Not necessarily. Even a glance at the parlous state of political discourse in Congress should give us pause.

Why? How would getting in a bunch of illiterate hobos improve matters? 

Governing well requires not only technocratic expertise

Legislators don't govern. The Executive may need technocratic expertise. Legislature need to access such expertise and then figure out how to draft sensible laws on that basis.  

but also civic virtue — an ability to deliberate about the common good and to identify with citizens from all walks of life.

Sandel, presumably, thinks he himself has this quality. But we don't want him in the Legislature. Why? Because he is a cretin. He doesn't even know about Michael Spence- who got a fucking Nobel Prize- and his theory of Education as a signal.  

But history suggests little correlation between the capacity for political judgment and the ability to win admission to elite universities.

Or being a Professor of Government at such a place. 

The notion that “the best and the brightest” are better at governing than their less-credentialed fellow citizens is a myth born of meritocratic hubris.

Says a guy suffering from hubris coz of his academic C.V. The cunt probably thinks he is good and smart.  

If the rhetoric of rising and the reign of technocratic merit have led us astray,

They haven't. Sensible people ignore rhetoric. They look at what is offered and the probability that those offers will be fulfilled.  

how might we recast the terms of moral and political aspiration?

They must only be cast in economic terms. Otherwise, why not just hand over all your money to a sweet-talking charlatan? Indeed, Sandel himself, with his rhetoric about folk 'being led astray' comes across like a crooked Televangelist. 

We should focus less on arming people for a meritocratic race and more on making life better for those who lack a diploma but who make important contributions to our society — through the work they do, the families they raise and the communities they serve.

But helping people is meritorious and it requires technical expertise. Arm people for that meritocratic race by all means. Don't handicap them by making them listen to your bullshit. 

This requires renewing the dignity of work and putting it at the center of our politics.

Why not renew the dignity of bed wedding and put it at the center of our approach to incontinence?  

It also requires reconsidering the meaning of success and questioning our meritocratic hubris: Is it my doing that I have the talents that society happens to prize — or is it my good luck?

Your being shit reflects the fact that the subject you teach is shit. Society rewards you for advertising the worthlessness of the University Department where you teach.  Sadly, because of Spence type signalling, we can't say that all your students are cretins. Some may be sociopathic sycophants. 

Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility: There, but for an accident of birth, or the grace of God, or the mystery of fate, go I.

That isn't humility. That is complacency. Humility is knowing that you are shit. You had good intentions but you fucked up. Your hubris may have arisen coz you studied a shite subject at Uni. On the other hand, you might simply be a bullshitting fuck up. The good news is that at least you haven't been arrested for indecent exposure. Your absorption in the business of talking bollocks prevented you from whipping out your dick and stroking yourself till you ejaculated upon the appalled faces of your students in the lecture hall. 

This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now.

No it isn't. What we need is the spirit of not talking bollocks incessantly even if it keeps your mind off the urge to whip your dick out and jerk off.  

It is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart.

Success separates winners from losers. The ethic of success does shit. I know coz I've got the ethic of success in spades. However I am a loser big time coz I am prepared to sell it to you for the low low price of $9.99.

It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life 

Best lived in a progressive kindergarten with access to a petting zoo. 

The problem with 'meritocracy' is that Academic tuition fees have risen in relative terms because of 'Baumol Cost disease'. That's eminently fixable thanks to technological change. There could be a silver lining to the COVID cloud in that respect. But not for Sandel. He is an old dog who has gotten hold of a rotten bone. He is going to repeat this shite till the day he dies.