"The Meritocracy Trap" w/ Daniel Markovits

Explicit content warning

05/11/20 • 78 min

Chris has a wide-ranging conversation with Daniel Markovits from Yale Law School about his recent book "The Meritocracy Trap" and how the structural imbalances that exist within corporate America conspire to prevent most workers--of almost any level--from the kind of stable career progression that once was responsible for creating a Professional Middle Class in this country.
Chris also muses about gratitude, considering ethical work, and gives a preview of next week's guest (for the first time!)
Read this stuff from Professor Markovits:
Article: "How Life Became and Endless, Terrible Competition"
Article: "How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class"
Book: "The Meritocracy Trap"
Op-Ed: "A Wealth Tax is the Logical Way to Support Coronavirus Relief"
About Professor Markovits:
Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Private Law.

Markovits works in the philosophical foundations of private law, moral and political philosophy, and behavioral economics. He publishes in a range of disciplines, including in Science, The American Economic Review, and The Yale Law Journal.

Markovits’s current book, The Meritocracy Trap (forthcoming, Penguin Press), places meritocracy at the center of rising economic inequality and social and political dysfunction. The book takes up the law, economics, and politics of human capital to identify the mechanisms through which meritocracy breeds inequality and to expose the burdens that meritocratic inequality imposes on all who fall within meritocracy’s orbit.

Writer, Host: Chris Thierfelder
Producers: Sarah and Max Warman
Art: Jennie Jacobs
Music: Kevin MacLeod
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Previous Episode

"May the Fourth Be With You. Always." w/ Sensei Gary Koan Janka

In a bit of a departure from the normal business programming, Chris sits down with Zen Priest Sensei Gary Koan Janka to talk about how our wants and fears of not getting what we want fuel our suffering and how to begin to alleviate that suffering.
From Chris: "I was thinking about all of the people who are afraid right now and what impact that fear is having on not only our economy, but our society writ large. I wanted to do something that went beyond the day to day micro-coping, or analysis of this or that aspect of business and offer a conversation that could literally appeal to every single person who listened to it, no matter their circumstance. I hope this helps."
Chris also offers a warning to folks looking to find enlightenment on a stationary bike or in a Lululemon, and explains how Jedi Masters walk among us.

Next Episode

"Bullshit Jobs and The Revolt of the Caring Class" w/ David Graeber

Today Chris sits down for an expansive talk with David Graeber. He is an anthropologist, author, activist and all-round congenial rabble-rouser. We cover his early observations that led to him writing his seminal work on modern labor "Bullshit Jobs" and trace through to today, where we see many of his earlier theories put to the test and found quite accurate, not the least of which being that the people we currently refer to as "non-essential" workers were, in fact, engaged in a fair volume of bullshit work.
We take a clear look at the state of the economy and of work and what the pandemic is revealing about that, and what we hope to see come out the other side.
Read this stuff:
Book: "Bullshit Jobs" (finally read the thing that Chris keeps referencing)
Article: Click here for a collection of David's articles
Scholarly Work: Click here for a collection David's scholarly work.
A History of the ILGWU