The Meritocracy Trap

Oct 28, 2024 4:32 PM

Author:Daniel Markovits

'This book flips your world upside down. Daniel Markovits argues that meritocracy isn't a virtuous, efficient system that rewards the best and brightest. Instead it rewards middle-class families who can afford huge investments in their children's education ... Frightening, eye-opening stuff' The Times, Books of the Year

Even in the midst of runaway economic inequality and dangerous social division, it remains an axiom of modern life that meritocracy reigns supreme and promises to open opportunity to all. The idea that reward should follow ability and effort is so entrenched in our psyche that, even as society divides itself at almost every turn, all sides can be heard repeating meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we think we are.

But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy's successes.

This is the radical argument that The Meritocracy Trap prosecutes with rare force, comprehensive research, and devastating persuasion. Daniel Markovits, a law professor trained in philosophy and economics, is better placed than most to puncture one of the dominant ideas of our age. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within, as well as how we can take the first steps towards a world that might afford us both prosperity and dignity.

Reviews

[A] fascinating assault on modern economic orthodoxy... It is a call for us all to put aside our prejudices - some of which have been invented for us, decades ago - and ask, is this what we need? Is it even what we really want?

—— Tim Stanley , Daily Telegraph

In this highly enlightening and hugely entertaining book, Jonathan Aldred guides us through the badlands of modern economics, revealing its pitfalls, quicksand, and quagmires. It is going to change the way in which we understand many modern debates about economics, politics, and society.

—— Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism and Economics: The User's Guide

This an important and timely book, the best I have recently read on the subject of 'whither economics?'

—— Lord Robert Skidelsky

An entertaining, wide-ranging and often challenging argument. Aldred writes exceptionally well and there is much here to agree with ... It's impossible to do justice to the sheer range of issues tackled.

—— Paul Johnson , Literary Review

Illuminating ... an unusual approach to critiquing the modern economic canon.

—— Paul Collier , Times Literary Supplement

Cloudmoney does well to map out how the switch away from cash is being spun as natural progress... Scott has struck an important vein, that is vital in a digital age

—— Financial Times

An important reflection on the new world of finance. Brett Scott writes with gusto about blockchain, crypto and the power nexus between Big Tech and the banks in a cashless society

—— Lionel Barber, author of The Powerful and The Damned

With this wonderful, lucid and urgently important book, Brett Scott is hunting big game. Get a copy - and make sure you pay with cash

—— Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands

Quietly radical and unexpectedly beautiful, this is so much more than a book about money. Brett Scott propels the reader to a new understanding of today's capitalism through humour, first-hand reportage, patient explanation, deep political analysis and a lot of heart. Let him change the way you see the world - he has for me

—— Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back

Arise all data donors from your slumber - and read this book. You - we - have been sucked into the "tech-finance vortex" that is the new, dangerous alliance of Big Finance and Big Tech. Addicted to our apps, we are trapped in a dizzying whirlpool of surveillance, allowing the FinTech vortex to exercise power over, and profit from, every transaction undertaken. Scott, steeped in the sector, guides us through it, and helps readers understand what is happening. He invites us to revolt and jam the Big Fusion. His book is an urgent must-read

—— Ann Pettifor

In a book that is simultaneously irreverent, hard-hitting and entertaining, Brett Scott blows apart conventional myths about cash, digital money, and crypto, and brilliantly shows us what's at stake in the coming battles for the soul of money

—— Stephanie Kelton, Author of The Deficit Myth

A groundbreaking book

—— Morning Star

A fantastic book about the world of commodity trading.

—— Stephanie Flanders , Bloomberg Stephanomics

A fascinating, sometimes hair-raising new book . . . A book which on the one hand tells us some really important things about the nature of money, power and the nature of the modern economy, but on the other is just full of some of the most fascinating stories.

—— Matthew Taylor , RSA Bridges to the Future

The captivating stories of the powerful commodity traders and mystery actors of markets and geopolitics

—— Roula Khalaf, FT Editor-in-Chief - Summer Books 2021 , Financial Times

The blistering tale of a clutch of hard-charging international commodity trading houses such as Cargill and Glencore. The authors, both former FT journalists, trace how they harnessed the commodity boom and the setbacks they now face as climate change casts a shadow over their business model.

—— Andrew Hill, FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Longlist , Financial Times

A very impressive profile of an industry that has long preferred to avoid the spotlight . . . The authors deftly weave stories of the individual traders and their trades with an account of the major shifts in the global economy of the past 70 years . . . Extensively researched and well written throughout . . . I would not hesitate to recommend this book.

—— International Affairs

A thriller . . . An engaging story of secret deals and embargo-evasion.

—— Forbes

An entertaining history of the rise of the international trading houses and the charismatic, freewheeling risk-takers who headed them.

—— Books of the Year , Financial Times

The story of how a few commodity-trading firms quietly reconfigured the world economy, making fortunes, juggling embargoes and swaying geopolitics.

—— Books of the Year , Economist

There was no single, dominant, astonishing voice in the wilderness in the debate on the credit crunch, but... Edward Chancellor, an economic historian, foresaw almost everything.

—— Charles Moore , Daily Telegraph

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