The Dark Side of Winning: How Meritocracy Became a Tyranny
It sounds like a paradox. Merit — being qualified, talented, hard-working — is universally celebrated. Surgeons, pilots, engineers: we want the best. Yet according to philosopher Michael Sandel, meritocracy has metastasized into a system that wounds both winners and losers, corroding the common good. In a recent lecture and discussion at Peking University, Sandel, joined by political philosopher Bai Tongdong, laid out a sweeping indictment of the meritocratic ideal and explored whether a more humble, civic-minded alternative is possible.
The Illusion of Deservingness
Sandel opened with a thought experiment: imagine a perfectly equal footrace. Every runner has identical training, nutrition, coaching. The track is flawless. Who would say the winner deserves the reward? Many in the audience balked. A student named Li Luyao gave the most fundamental objection: even in a perfect race, the fastest runner is gifted with natural talent — a random accident of luck, not a personal achievement. "Being a gifted runner is not the doing of the winner," Sandel echoed. "It's almost like a random factor, like a stone on the track."
Extend this logic beyond athletics. The intellectual firepower to ace the Gaokao, the charisma to fill a stadium like Taylor Swift, the entrepreneurial instincts to build a fortune — all are, to a significant degree, unearned. And even if we accept that talents are part of our identity, another layer of luck intervenes. LeBron James lives in a society that worships basketball; had he been born during the Renaissance, his athletic gifts would have been worth little. Sandel calls this the "moral arbitrariness" of both natural gifts and the market's capricious valuation of them. A pure meritocracy, he argues, cannot justify the inequalities it produces.
Hubris Above, Humiliation Below
The damage, however, extends beyond abstract unfairness. In recent decades, widening inequality has been accompanied by a toxic set of attitudes. "Those who've landed on top have come to believe that their success is their own doing, the measure of their merit," Sandel observed. "By implication, those who struggle must deserve their fate too." This breeds a corrosive arrogance among elites and a humiliating sense of failure among those left behind.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have fed this dynamic. For decades, the standard response to wage stagnation and job loss has been: "Go to university. You can make it if you try." Sandel called this a "rhetoric of rising" that places the burden entirely on individuals while ignoring structural causes. The result is not only persistent inequality but a political backlash. Working people, seeing their struggles dismissed as personal failings, turn to figures who channel their resentment — even when those figures offer little more than retribution. Sandel pointed to Donald Trump’s political success as a symptom: "Working people responded… because they felt looked down upon for generations by Democrats and Republicans alike."
The Winners’ Wounds
Meritocracy’s tyranny is not limited to those who lose. It also extracts a psychological toll on the winners. Students caught in the gaokao race, or the scramble for elite university admissions, experience what one Malaysian student, Aidan, described as an endless cycle of anxiety. "Even when you win one competition, there will be the next round. And the next round after that." The pressure to constantly achieve, to secure the next credential, leaves many feeling "mentally caged." Sandel shared his own memory of a high school math class where seating was rearranged after every quiz according to grade rank — a visceral illustration of how education can become an instrument of perpetual ranking rather than genuine learning.
The Chinese term neijuan (involution) captured this condition: a relentless, zero-sum striving where even rest induces guilt. The pursuit of merit, originally an empowering ideal, morphs into a source of exhaustion and despair.
Reclaiming Dignity and the Common Good
If meritocracy is so damaging, what should replace it? Sandel’s answer is not to abandon excellence but to honor work that does not require a university diploma, to reorient technology toward enhancing rather than replacing labor, and to revitalize civic participation. He pointed to historical examples: the Knights of Labor, who in the late 19th century demanded reading rooms in factories so workers could educate themselves; the post-World War II British Labour government, which included seven former coal miners and built the welfare state; Martin Luther King’s insistence that "the person who picks up our garbage is as important as the physician."
The key, Sandel argued, is to recognize that our achievements are never wholly our own. "A lively sense of the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility," he said. That humility — "there but for the accident of birth… go I" — is both a personal and a civic virtue. It underpins the solidarity needed to pursue the common good rather than retreat into a brutal competition of all against all.
Data Point: Generational Mobility
How realistic is the meritocratic promise of upward mobility? Sandel cited a study measuring how many generations it takes for a child born in the poorest 10% to reach the median income:
| Country | Generations Needed |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 2 |
| United States | 5 |
| China | 7 |
For many, the race is not just unfair but rigged from the start — a reality that exposes the hollowness of the "make it if you try" mantra.
Bai Tongdong’s Counterpoint: A Compassionate Meritocracy
Professor Bai, drawing on Confucian thought, offered a qualified defense. He agreed that credential-based meritocracy often masks stagnant class privilege and breeds arrogance. Yet he questioned whether simply celebrating the dignity of work is sufficient. In a large, modern society of strangers, bureaucracy and some form of elite governance are unavoidable. Bai proposed a "mixed regime" that combines popular voice with responsible, compassionate elites. The Confucian ideal of the daren (great person) is one who serves the common people, not one who lords over them. If winners are rewarded for serving the losers, the dynamic might shift.
Bai also warned that abandoning exam-based selection in favor of "whole-person" admissions could worsen inequality: wealthy families can afford piano lessons and enrichment; poor families often only afford cram schools. Instead, he suggested reforms like taxing private schools to fund public ones, making test preparation freely available, and admitting the top 5% from every public high school to ensure geographic and socioeconomic diversity. A compassionate elitism, he argued, might be more realistic than a society free of all hierarchy.
Criticisms
— The decades-long advice that a university degree is the primary solution to economic inequality is criticized for deflecting attention from structural causes and policy failures.
— Neoliberal economic policies pursued by mainstream parties are faulted for stagnating median wages while rewarding financial and credential elites.
— Political figures such as Donald Trump are condemned for exploiting legitimate working-class grievances to fuel xenophobia and division rather than addressing economic injustice.
— The direction of technological innovation, heavily influenced by venture capital, is argued to have prioritized labor replacement over worker empowerment without democratic deliberation.
— Elite educational institutions are seen as perpetuating a credentialist arms race that damages the well-being of even their most successful students.
— Media and public discourse are accused of normalizing meritocratic arrogance and neglecting the dignity of non-degree-holding labor.
Toward a Less Polarized Public Life
The three sessions at Peking University underscored a hunger for a richer public philosophy. When a student asked how to resist nihilism after exiting the rat race, Sandel pointed to the need for shared sources of meaning beyond markets and technology. The answer, he suggested, lies in rediscovering philosophy not as an abstract exercise but as a civic practice — in favelas, factories, and neighborhood gatherings, where citizens learn to reason together about justice and the good life. "Technology can't provide meaning," he said. "Meritocratic competition and market competition can't provide meaning. If anything, they tend to erode forms of community that can sustain traditions of meaning." That rediscovery, humble yet ambitious, may be the first step beyond the tyranny of merit.
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