Daniel Markovits: How the Rat Race Divides Us Into Winners and Loosers


Feb 3, 2021 | 15:30 - 16:30

Podcast

🇬🇧

This interview is in English

Political power and wealth are given to individuals based on talent, effort, and achievement. Getting into a university due to intelligence, opposed to birth. Rising to the top of a company due to skills and capabilities, not due to nepotism. Becoming wealthy due to hard work, instead of race. This is meritocracy. A system that has become prevalent since the 60s and sounds wonderous, right?

Professor Daniel Markovits disagrees. This Yale Law professor wrote a book called: “The meritocracy trap”, where he positions the idea of meritocracy as the cause of the cleavages that are erupting between the rich and everyone else. The elite tries everything to keep their family elite, while the middle class has to survive. Social mobility is low, people are stuck where they are, they are trapped. However, meritocracy has not only failed to work, the ideal is not good either.
We will discuss with Prof Markovits why he positions human capital central in his book. Are there still good sides of meritocracy? In what ways does the middle class suffer? And most importantly, how can we get out of this trap?

When? February 3rd, 15:30 p.m.
Where? Facebook Live Stream
Interviewers: Tim Vree and Pelle Padmos

Interviewers: