What about the Dignity of Unpaid Work?
What about the Dignity of Unpaid Work?

Summary/Abstract: While on the campaign trail for the election that would determine who would succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in Germany, Olaf Scholz, the leader of the Social Demo cratic Party expressed his conviction that ‘among certain professional classes, there is a meritocratic exuberance that has led people to believe their success is completely self-made. As a result, those who actually keep the show on the road don’t get the respect they deserve. That has to change’ [Oltermann 2021]. As it turned out, his words were heavily drawn from Michael Sandel’s new book The Tyranny of Merit. Sandel is no stranger to criticising how we tend to conflate market prices with value, not least of all because the monetary value markets ascribe through supply and demand is not always a good representation of worth [Sandel 2012]. In this new book, however, he takes the argument further and considers whether the pursuit of meritocracy has actually caused more harm than good, culminating in Brexit and the election of Trump, to the point that it might not be worth pursuing meritocracy at all from a justice standpoint.

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