Podcast: No Stupid Questions
Episode: 181. What’s So Great About Meritocracy? | No Stupid Questions
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode, complete with an Amazon buy link and quotes from the episode.
The Meritocracy Trap
Buy on Amazon"So Patrick says I'm a big fan of the podcast It would be insightful if the two of you could talk about the potential failures of a meritocracy like the one discussed in the Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits Are you familiar with this book I haven't read the Meritocracy Trap, but I'm pretty familiar with these arguments against meritocracy"
Justice
Buy on Amazon"There is another book on this topic of merit and meritocracy This one was written by one of the professors I took a course with at Harvard named Michael Sandel It was called Justice At the time, it was the largest lecture class at Harvard"
The Tyranny of Merit
Buy on Amazon"And so this is, I think, his latest book It came out in 2020: The Tyranny of Merit What's Become of the Common Good Let me just say that neither of these titles makes it seem at all like they have a bias I'm just kidding Meritocracy Trap, The Tyranny of Merit, you don't have to guess, right"
The Big Test
Buy on Amazon"Yeah I mean, if you go back, I don't know how many decades, but I think it was Nicholas Lemann's book The Big Test, which gives you a little history of these Ivy League admissions Lemann says, you know, there was a time in the history of these elite universities that the way you got in was what your last name was"
Success and Luck
Buy on Amazon"So Mike, there’s an economist named Robert Frank, and he wrote a book called Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy Okay And I would say the through line in a lot of these arguments, including Sandel's, is that when you get into Harvard, you think you earned it"