Sandel | The Tyranny of Merit

• Christian roots of meritocracy
• Paradox in Catholic Church. Can people earn salvation through religious observance and good works, or is God entirely free to decide whom to save? First option is just, but would bound God to recognize merit and therefore limiting His omnipotence.
• Luther, Calvin, and Puritans. Though began as observance to the glory of God, religious rituals inevitably prompts a sense of efficacy among participants as means to attain grace. Ethics of work and mastery of one's fate eventually wins out the ethics of gratitude and humility. 
• Connection with Adam Smith. Calvinist notion of providence and divine predestination ie "the calling" lends credibility to division of labor and the prevailing economic order. Christian asceticism "strode into the marketplace of life and slammed the door of monastery behind."

• Plato's idea of noble lie. Public beliefs that are untrue but nonetheless important to uphold to sustain civil harmony; eg the American dream, the nobility ruling class.

• Debunking Credentialism and Technocracy. 
• Governing well requires practical wisdom, character, civic virtue, political judgement, and ability to deliberate about the common good and pursue it effectively – none of which taught at universities nor correlates with high SAT scores.
• Technocratic rule disempowers ordinary citizens from participation.
• Technocracy, which characterizes decisions as smart and appears as value neutral, circumvents the project of moral persuasion.
• Technocracy in practice heavily replies on incentives. Incentivzing is a shortcut to achieve the same outcome without asking people to take responsibilities.
• The idea of "agreeing on the nonpolitical facts first then proceeds to debate opinions" simply does not work. People's perceptions are shaped by opinions. Whoever succeeds in framing the facts is already a long way in winning the argument.

• Economic standing says nothing about one's moral standing
• Talents are not only endowed, their subsequent market value produced are also subject to the vagaries of supply and demand (Hayek).
• Serving market demand is simply a matter of satisfying whatever wants and desires people happen to have. The ethical significance of such satisfaction depends on the ethical significance of the wants, which are often arbitrarily produced by the workings of the economic system itself (Frank Knight).

• Two conceptions of the common good
• Economic conception: sum of all consumer's preferences in an economy. Individuals are first and foremost consumers. Prevailing economic policies heavily biases this view. Distributive justice.
• Civic conception: deliberate purposes worthy of the political community and advance a just and good society. Individuals are recognized more by their role as producers. Contributive justice.