From The Hedgehog Review, a special section on meritocracy and its discontents, including Helen Andrews on the new ruling class; Wilfred M. McClay on how meritocracy went wrong; and Robert H. Frank on just deserts. Why Americans ignore the role of luck in everything: Jesse Singal reviews Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert Frank. Are you successful? If so, you’ve already won the lottery. Ruth Whippman on why the American Dream is making you unhappy: The insistence that this is a meritocracy has been so deeply ingrained, we have internalized the idea that we are all exactly where we deserve to be. Meritocracy in Obama’s Gilded Age: Aziz Rana on meritocracy and the modern university. Shattering the notion of the university as meritocracy: An excerpt from Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power by Max Haiven. Andrew Lilico on how Theresa May’s “meritocracy” is a recipe for Darwinian dystopia.
