Dissecting Meritocracy: Elijah Emery on the Work of Michael Sandel, Part 1

Prepare to have your views on meritocracy and society's fairness fundamentally challenged as Elijah Emery and I dissect Michael Sandel's "The Tyranny of Merit." We don't just skim the surface; we penetrate deep into the cultural and political implications of a system that rewards credentials over genuine talent. Our discourse ranges from the cultural weaving of meritocracy in different societies to the pointed issues of elite education and nepotism. By questioning the foundations of opportunity and success, this conversation promises a fresh perspective on the ideals we've long held as self-evident.

As the world grapples with the realities of globalization and its effects on local and international politics, our episode takes a sharp turn, scrutinizing how American cultural trends leave indelible marks on global elite institutions and immigration policies. The dialogue unfolds to reveal the intricate dance of minority voting patterns in the U.S., shaped by historical shifts post-1965 immigration reform. These insights are paralleled by a critique of current labor laws and unionization, painting a sobering picture of stagnation and the need for change.

Closing with a hard-hitting critique of political philosophy, we question whether nationalism can adequately address the daunting global issues we face, such as climate change and economic development. Elijah's expertise shines as we navigate through the complexities of power dynamics and the role of elite institutions in shaping societal outcomes. This episode is an intellectual feast, providing listeners with a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and myths surrounding meritocracy, power, and representation in today's society.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:35

Hello and welcome to VarmVlog, and today we are talking with Elijah Emery on the work of Michael Sandel, particularly his Critique of Meritocracy, which, for those of you who want to peruse a little bit of, I sampled a couple of chapters of back on the beginnings of radical engagements about a year ago now. Back on the beginnings of radical engagements about a year ago now. Michael Joseph Sandel is an American political philosopher at Harvard Law School. He used to have a show on the BBC that I sometimes listen to. He is an old man now, not as old as someone he's often linked with unjustly good old Alastair McIntyre, who's apparently immortal, but Sandell is 70.

Speaker 1: 2:47

This book that we're talking about is one of his more recent books. I think it made a splash when it came out. However, it's not one of his main books, so this book came out right before the pandemic. This is the Tyranny of Merit, what Becomes the Common Good and the limits of justice, which came, I think, out in the 90s. Um, and democracy's discontent, which came out in the 90s as well, although democracy's discontent book has been re-released and updated, and while I use that book for some of my frameworks for example, he has an interesting framework about the changing meaning of liberal republicanism from, like, a civic republican to an administrative and republican to an immoral administrative republic. Um, that I find interesting. However, his explanatory praxis for why it, why things went that way, is kind of lacking, it's? It's sort of just assumes, it's true.

Speaker 1: 3:35

Um, that book, though, is where he talks about the whole liberal elite voting patterns, and we're gonna start with that before we get into the meritocracy bit, because I wanted to talk to you about this book, because it's one of like four books that was anti-meritocratic left, right and center. They were all over the place. It came out between, like night, uh, 2017 and 2021. There's just a ton of them. It's a better one, I think, but what was interesting to me is I was going back and reading the John and seemingly was put on pause at the end of the 70s and not really picked back up again until recently. Like, yeah, people complain about meritocracy, but this whole, like there's a new class of people that's becoming a problem. A new class of people that's becoming a problem. What's interesting about this book is it is I put it in the Venn diagram of books that I don't hate and books about the quote-unquote PMC, although he does not use that term.

Speaker 2: 4:54

To his credit.

Speaker 1: 4:55

Yeah, to his credit, he doesn't try to make this a simple class analysis, but he does.

Speaker 2: 5:02

He does kind of he focuses on extrapolating a view of cultural politics from whether or not someone is credentialed, which is all he tries to do with that, and it's one reason why the book is, you know, not bad. He's not having some big explanation of the whole of society. He's saying that this is a specific problem within society with a number of effects. It's not so. In this way. It doesn't substitute for a class, it's not an attempt to substitute a class analysis. It's an attempt to do cultural critique. Basically, uh, yeah, I consider this cultural critique sociology and that's pretty much it.

Speaker 1: 5:46

That's, yeah, that's exactly what it is um, and I I do agree with you. It's a benefit of this book that he doesn't try to go like. This explains everything about politics right now, a la Peter Turchin or Kristen Parenti. Even our boy, our very dead boy, who's older than both of us. Our spiritual forefather, Christopher Lash, sometimes does this.

Speaker 2: 6:15

You sometimes see that in his books, where he does that less or better does this and his books where he does that less are better.

Speaker 1: 6:22

This is why me and you, I think, have a penchant for early Lash versus late Lash. Not because late Lash is conservative although there's some conservative things in there it's just not as well argued.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Lash, of course, does come up in this and one of my questions is do I get anything from most of this book that I don't get from reading revolt of the elites? Um, because that's really how I felt about the rhetoric of rising chapter Uh. And then the? Um, the, the great, because good, chapter uh links to like a lot of late last stuff. So there's there's a number of themes, or or even the culture of narcissism section on um, different, like visions of success, horatio alger to the happy hooker, um, a lot reminded me of that and those were not my favorite chapters of this book because I thought that he didn't really do a good job of explaining this shift. I thought what was much better was once we got to credentialism, the last acceptable prejudice, and thereafter, which focused much more narrowly on how meritocracy has played out in its current rendition than how we got to america meritocratic system, which I don't think is as as convincing of the tale, uh, as you know, his analysis of of what it does now yeah, well, yeah, um.

Speaker 1: 7:49

So well, let me, since we're jumping into that we can talk about, like the different, the interesting distinctions. The one thing I could say I definitely get out of this book that you don't get from revolt of the elites are actually any of the other books that we get, I mean katherine louis, virtue hoarders, all this stuff, um is he thinks this is a near universal phenomenon because of credentialization, and that he finds it in similar attitudes relating to it even in places like China. Right, that's a great point. My pushback to that was he was extrapolating from his exposure to things in China because there is a lower number of students going up, well, lower per capita number of students going into universities in China. There's a lot, but it's not everybody.

Speaker 2: 8:47

It's nowhere nearly as pushed as it is in the United States when I, when I say a good point, mostly what I mean is, yeah, lash doesn't attempt to do that. It's not specifically American phenomenon in Lash's mind which is not true anymore anymore.

Speaker 2: 9:00

You can see credential pattern voting in the UK elite in doing this analysis. The important thing about that is that the elite increasingly is increasingly cosmopolitan, not because of any conspiratorialism or anything like that, but because they're attending the same institutions, the same handful of institutions within the United States and then going back to their own countries afterwards.

Speaker 1: 9:43

I mean literally, there has been some attempt to kind of rein in the wild east of China's private education system right before COVID, and I actually think it's a good thing, even though I used to benefit from being downstream from that education system. The point he makes, I mean, even if you're not going to Harvard or Yale, which a lot of people are like. I made the observation just in my own life when I was working at these elite international schools right, these IB schools and they weren't prepping people to go to the United States, they were prepping people mostly to go to Europe and stuff, but that my students in those schools had liberal prejudices, watched liberal media, even when they were conservatives. They were reacting to American liberal and conservative trends. The moment I stepped out of that and even dealt with quote, middle class people in Egypt or in Mexico, I had a completely different experience.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Yeah, africa, at the institution I taught at in Egypt, basically parodied liberal talking points, but liberal middle-class Egyptians who spoke English and had some Western education but were not from the elite system, had opinions that vastly were different than what you would expect, including like a a kind of like liberalish argument for trump, because trump is at least honest, unlike that traitor obama who threw us under the bus like I think, uh, yeah, one thing, one thing I've I've always thought is that, uh, often the the the extent of similarity between the opinions of elite elements of foreign populations and people in the United States seems to me defined by how closely their careers are expected to just be a response to developments in America.

Speaker 2: 11:56

You start seeing this now happening in reverse, as China has become more important, like there's this Financial Times piece a little while back on how the executives of major banking institutions are expected to submit two essays a month on Xi Jinping thought to, like you know, do this cursory analysis of what's going on over there. It's a major market, and so I think that the exportation of American cultural attitudes about merit or our particular relationship to elite institutions is replicated more cleanly in countries that do more business with us and have a closer security arrangement with us. Egypt is actually a country which does have a pretty close security arrangement with the US.

Speaker 1: 12:43

I mean yes, the Camp David Accords means that basically the military is paid for by the United States. Surplus.

Speaker 2: 12:50

But I think that the business arrangement is less direct than, say, most of Europe or Japan or wherever, because there's not as much financial linkage, say most of Europe or Japan or wherever, because there's not as much financial linkage. Basically, in the markets.

Speaker 1: 13:04

The markets in Egypt are probably more clearly related to China. I remember Huawei and whatnot being on my radar much earlier than they are for people here, because, one, I spent time in South Korea and two, when I was in Africa, that was a major brand that you saw. Um, the, the China and Africa story is obviously one that is oversimplified in both directions. Um, china doesn't tend to like, it's not doing like debt traps uh, particularly any. You know it's any worse than, say, the imf. It is, however, less transparent and that does breed uh resentment, and there's also middle class resentment at the chinese uh in those countries, because china does not tend to train local workers when they build stuff.

Speaker 2: 14:03

They tend to bring in workers.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Yeah, it brings in its own workers, which is going to be a problem soon because they're going to have less and less workers to bring in. But my whole point about that is just I found it was interesting that Sandell pivots because China's a good example of this. In particular, I don't think this merit culture has gone away in China, even though it's relatively new there, even though I do not think we could say cleanly that China's as America-focused as it was even four years ago. I will also say that you know and this is where liberal interventionists that I don't tend to agree politically with, but tend to think they are a student analysis to point out china's hitting a wall and I think you're going to see some of this, uh, which is not to say like china's oh, is about to collapse.

Speaker 2: 15:00

I'm just saying like they're not growing as much anymore it has certain limitations, which make the type of cultural exportation that comes with high levels of foreign investment less likely in the near term, especially in farther away areas which are less immediately economically advantageous, like much of Africa. They're not all of it.

Speaker 1: 15:25

So Sandel's interesting in the. If you want to read his, read this under the Fareed Zakaria version of the multipolar world, not the weird hybrid version.

Speaker 2: 15:36

That doesn't give you much information.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Information, no matter what you're reading right um, but but he's sorry no, no, but he's, he's on to something, because this is going to have an effect, even if you see relative decoupling of the united states and china. Yeah, and it's also having effect in India, where you're seeing relative new coupling. There's a lot more focus on American relationships with India and India as a rising economy.

Speaker 2: 16:14

one element of the meritocracy which he doesn't focus so much on is the immigration meritocracy where, as he talks a lot about, kind of similar to Lash's analysis, or some of you know Lash's essay on the talented 10th, basically his argument that meritocracy saps talented members of the lower classes and co-ops them into the ruling class members of the lower classes and co-ops them into the ruling class. And one thing which is true in a number of countries is that the way immigration is structured in the developed world, with most countries though not necessarily the US having a points-based, merit-based system for getting in, is it's a system which encourages brain drain from the developed world, of the developing world, to give people a position in the developed world's meritocracy. Yeah, and maybe I missed that, if you, if you talked about that at all- no, I didn't.

Speaker 1: 17:14

I've talked about it in other places. I don't think he talked about it in this book and I don't think it came up. I mean, one of the things I've thought about a lot is that affects politics in weird ways.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Especially the relation between, like I mean, you have this, like this joke about Democratic uncles. You know Indian Democratic voters in Texas going to the voting booth to vote for Joe Biden and then home to uh like, send money to the BJP. You know stuff like that. Or you see, you see this with with Jewish voters and uh, israel, where Jewish voters are. You know, by and large, one of the most left wing groups in the country, uh, in terms of their voting habits and uh on, you know, the diaspora of the Democratic Party on their relationship to Israel. So what it replicates is a relationship where there's liberal politics in the country that many educated immigrants move to I think less because they're immigrants and more because of the credential factor but then their relationship to the country they came from is one where they tend to support even right-wing elements there.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Over time. This has an interesting dynamic, though, and I will call it for lack of. I'm going to be careful with this because I used to be in the paleo-conservative world, where this is almost an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. But like the idea that there are a bunch of credentialed conservatives who, because of their actual conservativeness in their home country, eventually form a bloc here that really doesn't give a shit about domestic policy and is only focused on foreign policy, is kind of opportunistic on domestic policy from the crystals, et cetera, a domestic policy front from the crystals, et cetera that you saw from the 70s to the 90s. One of the things that this pattern that you're pointing out I think it's happening and we're seeing it in real time If you just look at the GOP candidacy and how GOP are trying to get a group of color on the stage is you're seeing the factors of that liberal BJP weird alliance cut formally to a kind of Nikki Haley or Trump is, depending on how they want to think that you know how they think their alliance can go kind of conservatism and and, and I hate to say it, but you need to study elite minority groups and the way credentialization plays into that for that role to be clear.

Speaker 1: 19:54

But this brings me to one point I know you wanted to make because we talked about it just before the show. This leads to a complete, interesting lack in the analysis here of, um, the us working class, because, uh, everything I've seen recently and this seems to be a trend for a while if everyone talks about independence and low information, voters and blah, blah blah, but they don't want to link it to any class thing, the, the biggest group of independents in the country is people who make less than 50k a year yeah um, and that is where racialized voting patterns um are strongest, are strongest.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Right like so. The white working class doesn't tend to vote. But if it does vote, if it's in a, if it's in a red state, it votes Republican.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Which, it should be said, is new.

Speaker 1: 20:50

This is a post-2012 development Right People have to keep saying because we tend to forget pretty easily. I remember it just because I remember Hillary Clinton trying to outdo Obama by doing the kind of thing that Hillary Clinton accused Bernie Sanders of doing in 2016.

Speaker 2: 21:07

But anyway, and then people of color who are working class. If they vote, they tend to vote for Democrats, though this is differentiated by specific ethnic group more often than not.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Right, so it's like 80 percent.

Speaker 2: 21:27

you're a black, um it's like typically higher for black americans actually like 90.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Well, they're not necessarily in 2024, but in the 2012 right, yeah, yeah, it's like 90 that, although I have to say that there's weakening of that and we're talking about different areas of stats here. But what I find fascinating about that is that's becoming gendered. Yeah, because there's a different credentialization pattern in the African-American community than other communities of color, which is just want to talk about that, which is just want to talk about that. Um, even more than the white population, uh, african americans tend to educate women. Now, there's all kinds of complicated reasons for that, including, you know, the incarceration system, uh, racial bias and policing.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Oh, there's a ton of reasons for it but that's, that's just the effect on, that's the effect and there's also probably some cultural stuff there that's actually pretty logical, like if, like, uh, there's some theories that this is based off the idea if you educate the mother, then no matter what happens to the father, uh, you have a sound basis for raising of children. And that goes back to, like, africa I don't know that I buy. Well, I think what I would say.

Speaker 2: 22:47

Probably makes more sense to me is that in our credentialed world, um, you know, a lot of working class jobs which are primarily geared towards women, like being a nurse or being a teacher, does require higher education at this point, uh, some kind or another yeah, labor, aristocratic, working class jobs that do not outpace inflation but do like lead to something like a living wage and are the way out for women, um, as opposed to the way out for men because there's a like, a universal cultural opposition among men to like nursing or something right.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Obviously doesn't make economic sense, but just is the way it's played out thus far in the history of american work and maybe we'll change, who knows?

Speaker 1: 23:38

well, one of the things that I've been told by utah uh administrators, who are being more loose-lipped than they probably should have been, was that family wage assumptions actually still play a role in a lot of these fields. So there's just an assumption that there's another wage earner who is properly speaking middle class or upper middle class, because why else would you be educated and take a job that pays this low? I mean other people like me who are weird, um and the. The assumption in the black community has been well, you know, it's that our lumpenization. So what are you going to do?

Speaker 2: 24:23

yeah, um, though I do think another. Another element is, um, the changing demographics of who is in the black community post 1965 immigration reform, and I haven't seen very much about this, but I will say that a large percentage of the people who get higher education are people whose families came here after 1965. Get higher education are people whose families came here after 1965. So, like something out of like four fifths or something like that of people who got into Harvard while affirmative action was going on, and it's not clear if they got in because of affirmative action or whatnot. This is just a good stat. We're from, we're black people whose families came here post 1965 immigration, rather than the descendants of american slaves. Well, I mean, what this is to say is just that, uh, one another explanation of, uh, deferring styles of credentialization and, uh, now changing voting patterns is the fact that an increasingly large percentage of Black Americans are members of some diaspora community or other, which goes into our earlier analysis of the voting patterns of recent immigrants.

Speaker 1: 25:38

So, like the three to five percent of Black people in Salt Lake, almost all of them are either refugees or they're immigrants who came after 1980. Lake, almost all of them are either refugees or they're immigrants who came after 1980. And that's, you know, that's. It's not that there's no Black community here, but it has almost no relationship to the Southern Black community. Descending to a different place, yeah, or even yeah, I mean, or even people who've been free for a long time in the South. It's just, it's a completely different dynamic.

Speaker 2: 26:10

The other thing that it's the same thing in the Midwest with, like you know, Somali immigrants, for example. Yeah, Ilhan Omar.

Speaker 1: 26:16

We have. Yeah, I mean like look at the squad, for example, for this.

Speaker 2: 26:24

It's an indication that it's more complicated. Basically, what we're doing is a huge digression about the overridingly true point that we began with, which is that Sindel's explanation of the shift towards right-wing populist parties in large part is a resentment against, and an opposition to the vision of credentialization and meritocracy as a way of organizing society, and he doesn't have a true, it's just racial. It's true, it's just racial.

Speaker 1: 26:56

So, like it only really applies to white people, like it's, it's um, but it it does make. It makes certain delusions that Democrats had until very recently a lot more rational. I know that I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I have said hey, liberals, yes, the great replacement theory is the most weird racist conspiracy theory that you can throw up. However, your way of talking from 2007 to about last year, which predates that conspiracy theory, makes it sound.

Speaker 2: 27:35

I get where they it makes it sound more rational, yeah it makes it sound more rational than it actually even is.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I mean, the claim is like there's a rising tide of people of color who are going to unite with the liberal elites and, you know, vote Democrat forever. And you know Democrats played into that because they hoped it was true. You know, less because of immigration and more just because of demographic shifts among young people, in the, you know, in the racialization of the population, but it turns out that's actually not the case, um, and that demographics is not destiny basically the whole prediction that like, oh, everything's gonna be hunky-dory.

Speaker 1: 28:20

By what is it? 2048, where we're minority minority, I'm like. Well, by that point, half the latin people are considering themselves white and like do you remember actually the map that was provided in that book?

Speaker 2: 28:32

yeah, it included like it was like permanent democratic west virginia. So it just makes no sense. It's like. It's like virginia will, it's like colorado will stay red forever. Virgin, west virginia and missouri are going to be safe democratic states. And it's like who made this? You know? Like? Do you have any understanding of your own argument?

Speaker 1: 28:53

Yeah and so. So there's a kind of there's something very interesting about the meritocracy discussions that plays into Adolph Reed's critique of the racialized elite which I pointed out against some of my you know, adolf's hating friends that, like African dissent is a slave only stuff. Yes, the reparation scheme of that I don't think would work. I think it would read racial resentment out the wazoo, including and amongst black people, but between, uh, immigrant and non-immigrant. There's all kinds of problems with that kind of politics.

Speaker 2: 29:30

It's a disaster beyond it to get the republicans a 90 vote in every election right and also it's just like there is a moral case for it.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Until you start thinking about how complicated demographics and histories really are, even amongst white people, like like, are we gonna go? Like, okay, so we need reparations for the scotch irish who, while not had right privilege, do not were, were systemically forced out of certain kinds of ownership, totally. I mean like the whole thing opens up a can of worms that, if you really start getting consistent with it no, there's no real related people I can start to see. Are you comparing scotch irish and inter-service slavery? No, I'm not bringing that up at all.

Speaker 2: 30:15

And it's just that they had a different relationship to american capitalism at that, the period when it and exploited slave labor. Then other groups did right, and that's just.

Speaker 1: 30:26

That's obvious, and there's, there's and there's another complication of this, though, in the racial narrative stuff, and it's the one where and I've brought it up a lot recently indigenous people, indigenous academics, who speak for indigeneity, all the time overwhelmingly liberal yeah, actual voting patterns of indigenous people, incredibly conservative, yeah, um, and split politically, but that that tends to be. Interestingly, that's one of those, uh it's.

Speaker 2: 30:56

It's like there's a lot of block voting. You saw this with, um, the failure of heidi heitkamp to I think it was her, the north dakota democrat, where she like lost the support of the tribe and just lost like a massive amount of support in the 2018 election, and that's one of the reasons she went down. I mean, my favorite fact about this is that Marty Robbins, of course, is Native American, and one of his songs one of my favorite of his songs, in fact, ain't I right? And it's about chasing socialist communists out of your town and like sending american politicians who are opposed to vietnam war to vietnam. Um, you know, the first minority vice president was charles curtis, who was native american and, I believe, was maybe calvin cool or or Warren Harding's.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Yeah, he's from that period. He's also one of those save the, save the, what, saved the. Uh, save save the boy, kill the Indian people.

Speaker 2: 31:56

Yeah, so I mean it's all all. All this is to say if in the voting patterns within minority groups there's a very complicated situation which seems to have less to do with credentialization than Sandell would ascribe it to.

Speaker 1: 32:13

It seems to be. Honestly, when you look at indigenous voting patterns, it seems literally black voting based on immediate needs in rural communities and that can go in a lot of ways and right now often does sincerely and for material reasons, go Republican. So you know, I guess, I guess this is our first caveat is like hey, Sandell's talking about elite people and, by the way, if he's talking about elite people, he's talking about mostly white people because he's not looking at immigrants.

Speaker 2: 32:43

Yeah, he's talking about. He's talking about elite people and maybe Asian people but like, or you know, people who go to Harvard which, like that, right there it's mostly white people, a lot of Jewish people, a lot of Asian people and a smattering of other groups, some of whom are recent immigrants. And then, if he's talking about uncredentialed people, he's accurately characterizing the attitudes of most of the white lower and like lower middle class, and that's useful, but it certainly doesn't capture the entirety of the story.

Speaker 1: 33:21

However, I will say that it looks like that is like, Like I said to you, you know, before we started. Ironically, that means that this book may be more right in the future than it was when it was written, Because current patterns seem to be that the the most consistently blue voting demographic of the financial wealth category gray haired coastal rich people. Demographic of the financial wealth category Gray haired Coastal Rich people who are not uber rich. So we're talking about More than the top, the 1%, and actually it gets weird Because once you start getting into really high levels of money, you can start getting over a million, Like it starts flipping back and forth wildly.

Speaker 2: 34:11

Then it's block voting based on industry Right exactly. Who your daughter or son has married.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Right, like yeah, exactly what did your trust fund kid marry, if one of these people, one of the massive amounts of American bourgeoisie, who effectively opted out through uh investment structures, from participating in civic life anymore?

Speaker 2: 34:32

by the way, I would love one of these meritocracy people to start really looking at that shit, because it's a massive thing yeah, I mean, one of the things which made me become a socialist is going to private school, you know, because I was like this isn't a meritocracy. You know these remotely. This is a great education I'm getting. My mom was a teacher there, or she still is, but a number of these kids are, you know, really up on their high horse for something they did not earn and it's going to continue happening.

Speaker 1: 35:10

So, as a person who really believed in all that Ivy League this is the irony about being a working class person who gets into higher ed significantly is you have a tendency to believe all this meritocracy that Sandell's proposing. It's actually interesting that one of the ways to appeal to the working class that go into college is to lie to them about meritocracy.

Speaker 2: 35:34

I think it's also true that there are certain people who earn their place at the top. Like you know, it's possible, like I'm just saying, like you can succeed by working hard, but most of the people at the top are succeeding by a mixture of working in general sometimes hard, sometimes not and the fortunate position which they found themselves in.

Speaker 1: 35:59

There's a mathematical study on this that I actually think is useful no-transcript world as it exists.

Speaker 2: 36:58

The effects of the world of meritocracy as it exists are manifestly undesirable and unfair even at the things they promise to do.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Right, I mean, this is a moral condemnation to oppose.

Speaker 2: 37:16

Well, no one deserves it, even the people who work hard Like. The point is that this is a bad way of allocating things because it's so complex and it is so bad at rewarding the people who actually do work the hardest, in addition to to the other, you know, manifest effects of meritocracy well, I'll give you an example of that.

Speaker 1: 37:39

Like, um, one of the traits that I talk about when we talk about and I don't know why we're still stuck on racial stuff, because I guess that's where this this is the.

Speaker 1: 37:50

That's the biggest weakness of the book right, um, but one of the things that actually is interesting about like, the meritocracy game, right, we always think of, like government workers, where there's no meritocracy one, as I pointed out, yeah, it's weirdly like there's a. If you do municipal or state work, you actually have more fiscal constraints than either private corporations do. If they get venture capital or anything involving the federal government, you actually do have to run a fairly lean, mean ship because you're publicly accountable and you can't print your own money, um, but also because, like non-discrimination laws are actually taken seriously, which is not to say private corporations don't take them seriously, but they take them seriously defensively, right, rather than there's all this back stuff that that you know.

Speaker 1: 38:47

I think you know the complete, the implicit bias, racism, shit definitely gets overstated.

Speaker 1: 38:54

But this is one of those places where it's real Um, and you know that's really fucking matters. Um, private businesses often don't have nepotism rules or if they do, they're very specific and the more elite you are, honestly, the less likely it is to apply. For example, even in academia, which is overseen by the government to some degree, I, as a high school teacher, have all these nepotism rules that, unless I'm in a rule area where they just kind of waive them because they just don't have the workforce, is applied Right. By that I mean, like I can't work in the direct chain of command with my spouse. In fact, if I'm in a lot of school districts, I can't work at the same school as my spouse, et cetera. I can't. You know, family members can work together, but there's limits.

Speaker 1: 39:50

Okay, right, the Black community overwhelmingly, if it got credentialed and got into the nursing and where a lot of Black men went to was municipal work. Because, well, because they actually do take the anti-discriminating laws and control for implicit bias, inherently because they're afraid that's implicit bias, that's explicit bias well, yeah, well, I think it's, it's not, it's not targeted racially.

Speaker 1: 40:24

It's just targeted at your family, which and friends right right right, look like you do positive explicit bias versus versus yeah so they take care of all that. But what's interesting is, even in elite institutions in the public sector, that starts to break down. Um, what I was getting to is like there is no such thing as a spouse hire in public schools.

Speaker 2: 40:47

Right, there is an elite international schools there is, and I just yeah, and then the highest level, you have this where mitch mcconnell's wife was, you know, secretary of transportation or something right, and it's not, that's not a, it's not like just a nepo hire, but you know, oh, jobs that they like help out each, you know they help each other out with. Uh, it's because the higher you go, the more likely it is that you're like just working with a small cadre of people you already know.

Speaker 1: 41:21

Um but even you know that's one example. But let's even look at elite institutions like the one you were talking about private school, you go to a private um elite university. One of the benefits of doing that is spousal hires. Yeah, no, it is. And and what's weird is like originally spousal hires was kind of get more women phds in and they wouldn't have. That's not. It doesn't seem to cut that way.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Now there's plenty of male spousal hires now so the, the, but my comparison to that at a public school like that would be, we would. We would freak out like if that ever happened at a public school where in some ways, honestly, it has less effect.

Speaker 2: 42:01

Yeah, there were a number of people who were spousal hires at my, at, you know, maybe not just that, but certainly two people who were married, who both worked at the school for my high school, same thing for going to Cornell, same thing at Columbia Law. Now there's tons of people where it's just overlap everywhere.

Speaker 1: 42:24

And that, by the way, it's not purely I mentioned. Some of this is actually from progressive policy. Some of this is also like there was the two body problem and people realize that that means like, oh, if you're you know, of course, academics spend most of their 20s and 30s in academic institutions, so they're likely to meet and fall in love with academics. No shit, who else do they see other than students? You definitely don't want them dating those, so, like, um, what what happens then is like, okay, well, now you have this thing, but you're both in a very limited field where there's very limited jobs. We're gonna make an exception initially, but the back it and that seems rational.

Speaker 1: 43:02

Like when I was getting my mfa, that even seemed like, well, that's a problem that we have and it fucking sucks. And it wasn't that big a deal for me because my spouse was not, uh, back when I was married, um, an academic, so I didn't worry about it, like she could probably get a job and whatever near where I went. If she couldn't, I wouldn't go there. But for academics I got it and I get how that happened. However, that compounds over time in this problem where you have like family institutions like this yeah, this isn't.

Speaker 2: 43:40

It should be said again. None of this is a moral condemnation, like if I was in a position where somebody was asking me, can you help me get a job here? And I thought they were remotely qualified, including a close member of my family, of course I'd do it Everybody would. It's just that this means eventually you're in a position where elite institutions are not simply correlated to deservedness, which is what they say they are, and it also is downstream of just a system where, more broadly, for much of the past 50 years, there have been a smaller and smaller number of jobs, um, on which you can raise a family or even support yourself, uh, and there's more and more reliance on these backdoor ways of getting entry to the few jobs which do pay well, or even the ones who don't.

Speaker 1: 44:34

This does lead us to something that Sandel doesn't see because he is limiting himself, but that I do think it. I was reading Christian Parenti and he was pointing this out, that one of the things that we have to look at is different from the first round of critiques of the professional, professional, marginal, rational, etc. Versus the second round in the nineties, versus now. All right, and it's interesting because I said, this is the thing picked up and it was dropped in the eighties and nineties. Christopher Lash's revolt of the elites was one of the only ones that was not conservative and we can go back on forefront on that but you and I both.

Speaker 2: 45:08

It's an introduction, basically, to a work of political economy he was planning on doing before dying and I both.

Speaker 1: 45:14

It's, it's an introduction, basically, to a work of political economy he was planning on doing before dying. Right, it's a big project. Blah, blah, blah, um it's kind of like.

Speaker 2: 45:19

It's kind of like how haven is like on its own, like a book which is interesting but doesn't tell you a lot until you get to culture of narcissism and the minimal self, and then you're like, wow, this is a much bigger story than he was talking about. That like. Then you know this is a much bigger project, right?

Speaker 1: 45:36

like or not his conclusions right, I mean, what are the problems? I do love reading early lash, where he mocks socio-freudianism for trying to over explain everything through freud.

Speaker 2: 45:49

Yeah he does that, and he does that in the new radicalism radicalism right and I am a socio freudian, you know right, it's just, it's just like and he's like I'm the best at it yeah um and then you know, I think you and I go back and forth from this he just drops it like I don't.

Speaker 1: 46:07

I don't mean he abandons it, it just gets dropped.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Yeah, it's not a major theme, certainly of revolt, though I think you can read um the true and only heaven, to have, like, some parts of what initially seems religious actually be just like washed up freudianism. Um, like that, that section where he's like it's a deep gratitude for things early in our lived experience. This is the basis of hope and, like everybody's like, he's talking about the soul and God and I'm like, yeah, he's talking about the oceanic womb. That he's talking about in the minimal self and he's just dressed it up in new language, like you know. But anyway, this is beside the scope.

Speaker 1: 46:50

Sandell does not do this. But and one of the things that was actually refreshing about reading sandell is it was more rigorous than your average dumb punditry book. Definitely, and this is where I was about to say, in the 90s there was a conservative strain of this from the david brooks crowd, like bobos in paradise that book was funny.

Speaker 2: 47:11

I've read it it was hilarious.

Speaker 1: 47:14

I I enjoy it to like laugh at 90s liberals.

Speaker 2: 47:17

However, it's also full of shit it's not a good good critique if, if your like basis is of your book is a pun.

Speaker 1: 47:27

You're usually not doing rigorous critique, I think right, although we should be careful I mean leftist should be careful, not me and you, but leftist should be careful that because there's a lot of big critiques that are that are because they're dressed up in psychoanalysis or post-structuralism or neo-marxism or whatever and I don't mean neo-marxism in the dumb way john peterson does um that people miss. The whole thing's basically a pun, like I am currently writing a book called Wonktopia, which is about the Cass Sunstein, where I, as I'm falling to what we see in liberals now and my first thing, as I say, this is an arbitrary thing that I am picking out to make a point that you should assume is not true. It's like, which is just funny, because it's like I, I really unfortunately think leftists should start stating that our paradigms aren't real. They are just a way to get you to see something. But anyway, um, this, this book is interesting because it reads kind of like one of those punditry books, in that it is full of headlines from the late, late teens.

Speaker 2: 48:35

It looks like one too. I'm going to show this off.

Speaker 1: 48:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:38

You would buy this in an airport.

Speaker 1: 48:41

It is. It is very much an airport book design and yet it is way more rigorous than that. Yes, it's easy to read and I think that also kind of throws people off, because people are used to working through shit that's very difficult to read, to get like minimal stuff.

Speaker 2: 49:01

This is all pretty directly stated it's very direct, but it also, like, is really rigorous research. Um, you know, it's not, it's not vast, it misses a lot, but it's not like one of those books that you flip through and it's like one citation per page. Uh, there's tons. There's tons of citations. It's clear. This guy did his research. Um, so, you know, if you're in an airport, I would recommend anybody you know pick it up. If you're not, don't go out of your way. That's my attitude. That's a joke.

Speaker 1: 49:32

Um well here, my, my, uh. My thing about this book is like yasha monk. Right now his student is doing this with the id and I like there's a whole strain of like lefty, liberally thinkers like sandell, including his, his doctoral advisor, the communicarian charles taylor, who he kind of rejects for being too soft on capitalism and liberalism, and then yasha monk, who I think is the dumb version of this. Um, I not that yasha monk is done, I mean is not. But like I've seen, I've read his new id poll, it's not as thorough as sandell is no, and it's also very, you know, and sandell's interesting.

Speaker 1: 50:12

I mean sandell caught, you know, sandell's had an effect on liberal jurors puddings, even though he's not a liberal, because his student, uh, katanji brown jackson, is on the supreme court, um, so I mean he is. How much did his uh like left communitarian republicanism affect Kataja Brown Jackson? I don't think a lot. I haven't read any enough of her rulings to say for sure, but having read them so far, I don't see a lot of like Communitarian, like public asset building stock going on, and, and what she's doing, building thought going on, and and and what she's doing, um, and and he I mean sandel, interesting too because he's in a, he's a political philosopher in a law school, which is something that means that he is very much working in a real tradition like vermule.

Speaker 2: 51:11

No, I'm yeah no, I'm actually a legal scholar, but he is also.

Speaker 1: 51:16

He's a similar, a similar breed in terms of his public uh attitudes well, I was about to say all the other people I think that are like this, who aren't this communitarian strain that I'm talking about. Um, almost all of them are conservative political philosophers. Yeah, either of the venire denine neo um, like national conservative post-liberal school, or of the neoconservative like hamilfarb and irving Kristol in that school, like Stanley Rosen, people like that. A lot of my audience, who's mostly used to left references, are like who the hell are you talking about?

Speaker 2: 52:00

A great example of this is actually Noam Chomsky, but he's not producing anything at the moment.

Speaker 1: 52:07

Yeah, and I mean yes. And also what he taught in and what he theorized politically were like very separate. Yeah, and I mean yes. And also what he taught in and what he theorized politically were like very separate yeah, which is not true for Sandell. It's not true for the conservative versions of this, like Vermeule and Deneen. In some ways, he is predicting and and responding to the vermules and vermines and denines and also the cast sunsteens of the world.

Speaker 2: 52:41

He doesn't see you cast sunstein favorably, I think right and actually that's my critique of this book.

Speaker 1: 52:48

Is there's part of him who does still believe?

Speaker 2: 52:51

in workerist protectionism, anti-immigration can fix it. Yeah, basically, I think, basically he thinks that? Well, basically he's a corporatist in the same way that denine and vermule are, but with more left-wing politics yeah, I mean, I think, like the basic conclusion you come to from that perspective is that the most vital thing is a refocusing on national sovereignty, because internationalism or not internationalism, but in international politics in its current form, is typically a globalized deference to technocratic institutions abroad. Right, which is true.

Speaker 1: 53:30

And you could definitely see someone like these neo-MMTers glomming on to Sandell, because they all, like you know, they like to believe we're already in that world. Yeah, I mean like.

Speaker 2: 53:40

I do think that certain elements of economic analysis point to not economic nationalism, but a focus on the national economy over the international economy being something that could be potent and improve the living standards and the politics of, say, the United States, but it's insufficient and it misses a lot of the point of how we got here and also doesn't really offer a way out or answer the most pressing issues, which are like global development, climate change, things which are not a matter of simply re-politicizing the nation into a nation-building project.

Speaker 1: 54:23

Right.

Speaker 2: 54:24

A domestic nation-building project, I should say.

Speaker 1: 54:26

And I also don't think I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2: 54:29

Also, I think both the left and the right are thinking of finance as a tool for global development, not a tool for, you know, additional sovereignty, because we have sufficient sovereignty within the financial system to do whatever we need to do, you know, in terms of monetary policy, not fiscal policy necessarily. But the point, the point of this is just to say, like it's not a panacea, uh, to our attitudes or a cultural problem, which sandell identifies, to simply do tariffs and build factories here right, I mean because the reason why I point out this corporatism, because this is where Sandell is different from us, or at least me in that Backhanded?

Speaker 2: 55:36

No, I'm joking.

Speaker 1: 55:39

Well, in that I think class collaborationism is always, under this system in particular, doomed, always under this system in particular, doomed. And I hate to be all Benjamin Studebaker-y on things, but I'm going to be all Benjamin Studebaker-y For those who listened to the Corrupted interview on that. We talked about this Capital flight. Yes, you can theoretically pump money into it to prevent capital flight from the monetary policy. Maybe in the fiscal policy, if you really like, rearrange some law. The problem that you have with that is that the power dynamics internally are not fundamentally changed by doing just that.

Speaker 2: 56:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 56:29

And because of that, you are still at risk of capital flight in different ways than you would think. So what do I mean? Well, no, a lot of these companies aren't going to leave the biggest market in the world, but they might leave your state and fuck your individual senator, and thus that's never going to be able to go through yeah, no, I, I think that's absolutely true, and I don't think Sandell's vision for this like when I read this.

Speaker 1: 56:56

I was reading this book to talk to you about it and I just got through Studebaker's book for an interview and I was just like Studebaker would just hit Sandell with a wall. There's no way.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Yeah, I mean Sandell is not.

Speaker 2: 57:08

He's not calling, for example, for establishing, like public companies in, like the rural Midwest, or something you know, like, something which has greater constraints on capital flight of the type you're talking about, which is certainly more, more probably going to be more frequent in an era of reshoring, more probably going to be more frequent in an era of reshoring, you know, not even as a matter of government policy, but also based on energy costs, like compare the energy costs in California to those in the South, or deferring labor laws.

Speaker 2: 57:40

You know, like the point of this is that it replicates the dynamics of globalization, the awful ones internally, and there's no real means of addressing this beyond making it so that the projects that you know, like the Biden green policy, for example, embarks on, are so large in these targeted areas that it's economically unadvantageous to move them in the immediate term. But we're not talking 50 years out. And if you're talking about, you know, cultural reform, which is basically what Sunil is talking about, you have to be planning for the next 70 years, you know you have to be planning on a generational level, not just on the immediate level of returning jobs to a particular area. Now.

Speaker 1: 58:41

Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. This brings us to and we're going to wrap up this part one and I think we're going to go more into the specific argument he makes with the book. Why I'm frustrated, even though I've talked about how great this book is. It is great, but I'm frustrated with his story for how this happened being so limited, necessarily because of what he's choosing to write about Decisions within, like the Harvard presidency. Right, because like who gives a shit really?

Speaker 2: 59:16

It tells you why they didn't expand. It doesn't tell you much more.

Speaker 1: 59:19

Right and like the expansion of these institutions would not have fixed these larger-scale problems.

Speaker 2: 59:25

No, and that's Well he, I mean he admits that, Right, Well he, I mean, he admits that. But that's why his solutions seem to offer ways to undercut the vision of meritocracy, rather than even undercutting the effect of producing an elite. It's just that this elite would be recognized as more circumstantial than our current elite.

Speaker 1: 59:48

Right Right, whereas I, you know, I guess, when we talk about the substance of this in the next episode, I want to think working class as a relatively static force. That has been in so many of these books. That has been an assumption. Sandel's interesting because he doesn't think that they have to be, unlike, say, turchin, who just doesn't factor them in at all ever, any time in history period. But he also doesn't seem to think that you know that there's a real way to revision, like to get away with this class, and I don't when I say this I don't mean get away with the need for experts. I got asked a weird question like would a with a militia have special services? And I was like do workers have specializations?

Speaker 2: 1:00:55

Or police procedurals, obviously Right.

Speaker 1: 1:00:59

Well, I was just like do workers have specializations? Would you think about that? Ask yourself a question about like.

Speaker 2: 1:01:07

Will you be a member of the SWAT team under socialism? Well it's not even.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

I know that's a joke. Will you be a member of the SWAT team under socialism?

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

It's not even.

Speaker 1: 1:01:15

I know that's a joke, but I mean it in a more serious way, because I talk about what class in a deeper sense and a sense that most socialists won't go to, because it implies eventually getting rid of states for government functions and stuff like that. Where I'm like, the problem is the non. The problem is the fungibility of resources and the non fungibility of positions, and that's an interesting thing to talk about. But by the fact like there's nothing, I think like even in a anarchist system that was functional, with such a thing existed, even in an anarchist-y system that was functional, if such a thing existed, there would be specializations and differences in people, because there's just fucking specializations and differences in people, naturally.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

But the differences in a system where there's relative power, egalitarianism, which would necessarily be a, would be actually would by necessarily be a class of society, um, if they fuck up, you can recall them in a way that makes them much more accountable to everyone in in the group, and I don't see anything like a plan for that coming out of sendell. I see a plan for like. We just need to like, turn on the, we need to turn against the liberal internationalism, have a left-wing nationalism. But you know, like I you know the when you mentioned Vermeulen, deneen, I'm like it is amazing how much Sandell agrees with.

Speaker 1: 1:02:48

Vermeulen Deneen. He's just what he like. He doesn't think like a Catholic theocracy would be great for the country or viable as a basis for a civic republic.

Speaker 2: 1:02:59

I'm in complete agreement with that perspective from him.

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

Right, but if you were to like, take him and someone who doesn't go as far as Vermeulen-Den but goes almost as far, like Sir Rob Amari.

Speaker 2: 1:03:13

Well, he mentions Rob favorably in this.

Speaker 1: 1:03:15

I know he does. So you just you sort of see like where this goes, Whereas I just think this corporatist stuff because it is it actually still naturalizes a lot of these power dynamics. It doesn't really look at how they develop long term. It talks about the stuff that we were talking about. Yeah, this is accidental. It comes out of well-meaning, even progressive policy, and this is one thing you and I both talk about. Maybe we get it from Lash. I get it from having been a conservative for a while. I never totally abandoned this, that the conservative critique of unforeseen consequences is something that the left really needs to get through it or james c scott everyone yeah, um, that like this stuff has feedback loops.

Speaker 1: 1:04:01

You really gotta you really gotta think about it and a lot of them and you can't predict all of them, but you have to be able to pivot to deal with them. And we built, like there's still, even amongst the relative far left in culture, a love of institutions, in a like like someone, like this conspiracy, the conspiratoriality podcast. I've been listening to lots of my mind, a lot these days. They'll be like well, you know, there's a lot of good reasons why people have turned anti-elite because of neoliberalism, capitalism, etc.

Speaker 2: 1:04:39

But they still actually accept the elite institutions on their face value, in a way that I'm just like. You see this in the places where the protests against the Israeli response in Gaza have been most discussed. It's people protesting against their colleges, not just on the colleges, they're protesting against the college, which, if you're asking for divestment, there's good reasons for that, but it's a targeting at an institution that they think could be utilized to change things in a way which misunderstands the relative importance of that institution in prolonging the status quo. You know Right.

Speaker 1: 1:05:20

Hence why affirmative action like diversified the elites and changed very little for poor black people, like it's it's. It's something that I think we have to really, really look at. But I wanted to go into the merits of this book and the demerits before we went into the specifics, because I also think some of those demerits like not looking at immigration patterns it seemingly is so focused on elite that it's basically focused on white, asian and, uh, jewish people, like it's not just on the credentialed classes, who, I think it should be added, also have much less of an influence over society than maybe sendella tributes to them uh well, I mean there's there's a narcissism of the PMC fighters within the PMC.

Speaker 2: 1:06:14

It's not that, like you know, if the elite was truly as powerful and respected as maybe they think they are though I don't think post-Trump, they think they are in the same way or, as Sindel's book would suggest, democrats would win like 80 percent of the vote in every election, and our country would like look like California everywhere you know which would be a disaster, but it would be a disaster.

Speaker 2: 1:06:42

That's why I said California rather than New York. This country, you know, this country, could do with a little more of a New York attitude, let's say. But anyway, like the point is that there are segments of the elite, I definitely prefer East Coast liberal elites over West Coast liberal elites.

Speaker 1: 1:06:59

That's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 2: 1:07:02

So true Point is that elites are not wholly defined by credentials. They're, in fact, much more defined in terms of their effect on the world and their power, by the jobs they're, in fact, much more defined in terms of their you know effect on the world and their power, by the jobs they're in, how much money they make, uh, their and their position within industry and, you know, agribusiness, for example, has massive influence over the country and it's not like a cast of henry wallaceronomists, it's like dudes who own, like you know, tens of thousands of acres of land or something you know. It's just a very different way of, it's a different style of elite than that which is felt most pertinently in major cities.

Speaker 1: 1:07:51

Right, which this gets to my other point about when you go up in the higher echelons, this whole like, okay, the predictor is under a hundred, under a hundred K, racialized slightly more, slightly more Democrat, cratic, leading just because of urbanization, and way more independent, even particularly I mean particularly most white people, but even in latin people, etc. Uh, over 100k likely to be republican. Others are 250k likely to be, super likely to be democratic. Uh, I mean, there is a way where I tell people like joe biden and diane fan sign do represent a significant block in their party's voting base, not just in their leadership class yeah um, and then over over 500k, a million k.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

You get into the wild west in that it's block voting based on industry and it's going to be predicted by regional industry yeah, it is.

Speaker 2: 1:08:49

Or just, in fact, for people who are not wealthy because of industry, um right or, yes, personal affiliation, uh, cultural, cultural affiliation, etc.

Speaker 1: 1:09:01

When we talk about, like heiresses, of trust funds like clinton voters, you know right, um, these, this world is is harder. That world's actually weirdly harder to predict. In a way, that also complicates their narrative, because there is sort of like well, why aren't all the super rich democrats in, if it's this that simple and the answer goes well, not all the elites are actually that credentialed yeah, and why is that working class resentment against, like agribusiness or something you know, right uh?

Speaker 1: 1:09:32

there is, it's just reflected by voting patterns right, let's say, like the small farmer suicide thing was like it is aimed at at, you know, and small farmers are like like one percent of the population or less, but like, but like it's aimed at elite agribusiness and government policy, but it doesn't cut in a clearly partisan way. I mean because that's a strange mixture of, like the two or three holdover old conservative families who still do small farming uh are weird libertarian startups. Or like leftists who want to do farming, co-ops who do boutique farming and still end up having to charge a lot for it. That's like a very like, yes, they're mad at agribusiness, but it doesn't cut in a partisan way. And, to make it even more problematic, it also doesn't have a mass base anywhere, like because we're talking about relatively small parts of the US population. It's also why, for example, like, the actual politics of indigenous people doesn't really get reflected in our discourse about indigenous people because they're 3% of the population, course, about indigenous people because they're three percent of the population, like you know, absolute proof of genocide.

Speaker 1: 1:10:57

But it's hard to build a coalition out of that. Yeah, um, and so these are things like, if you are a uh, a relatively uh reformist socialist like yourself, or a fire and brimstone socialist like myself who is not sure that this is ever going to be reformable. The issue that we have is that we often actually read the entire political landscape in the way that these liberals do, which are defined by elite institutions and even certain kinds of anti-liberalism, whether it's this left communitarianism of Sandel or the right communitarianism of Vemule, deneen and Amari. That's still a relatively elite discourse.

Speaker 1: 1:11:51

Being a member of the uh center right of the far left has its limitations well, yeah, um, and one of the things that I, that I, when I talk to like working people, even like strike discourse right now, which definitely affects workers, really isn't bleeding out into into middle-aged workers that much. It's just not, um, unless you're in an industry where it's actively happening, in which case, yes, it is, but it's not like but those are a very small percentage of industries, you know right.

Speaker 1: 1:12:24

And so you hear this current narrative about like oh yay, we are in this moment of like labor revitalization and a lot of workers hear it and go like, what are you fucking talking about? And that's because even the anti-meritocratic discourse is rooted in these institutions. It actually assumes this meritocracy has more effect on people's lives than it probably actually does.

Speaker 2: 1:12:48

I mean it's also it's much easier to write pieces about large institutions than like the myriad small institutions that define most people's lives right. Which is easier to understand the uaw than all auto repair shops in the country?

Speaker 1: 1:13:02

right, well, yeah, this is, this is, this is uh, this is something that I keep pointing out, but it's a major blind spot right now because, like you, just we are telling ourselves a narrative that is actually weirdly based on this meritocratic narrative, even though it's a counter to it, and Sindel's an example of that and we're going to talk about that in our next episode and maybe you know what he gets right, what he gets wrong and more specific, but we do it too, all the time and it's like, like the number of times in the last 10 years that I'm like we're seeing a labor resurgence and I'm like, yes, we are, and yet I don't know what it means.

Speaker 1: 1:13:43

Like, like, um, and I don't think it means what you think it means because, like you, are viewing this from a very particular lens in a very particular sector, and you're right. Also, large institutions. Like it's also easier, just order, like there's a reason why we've shifted from the uaw doing stuff to other stuff and then still not talked about like, hey, guys, how much of the economy can be revitalized amongst workers unions is, on the industrial scale, right, the uaw? And the answer is about 12.

Speaker 2: 1:14:15

Yeah, like it's just, it's not I mean, it's a matter also of like. Labor law is still geared towards the situation that exists in the 1970s, when there was the last major reform to labor law. Yeah, which allowed minor reform in the 70s.

Speaker 1: 1:14:30

And that was to allow public sector workers to unionize, which then became the only thing that really is still unionized outside of nature. But on that depressing note, we will come back to this, elijah, so I'm going to end us here. Thank you for coming on, and you will be back to talk more about Sandell in detail very soon. Thanks,