What Happened to the Public Good? Michael Sandel on the Tyranny of Meritocracy

We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that “you can make it if you try”.  The political philosopher Michael Sandel offers an alternative way of thinking about success and failure – more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, more affirming of the dignity of work and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.