A timely book amidst a pandemic that has laid bare the inequalities that exist due to class by a meritocracy that, ironically and in theory, was intended to overcome class and wealth divisions.

Sandel is in good form here, and it's a significantally better argued book than his What Money Can't Buy, which read more as a deluge of examples aimed at garnering the right intuitions from readers that, yes, there's lots of things money shouldn't buy, but then felt lacking in reasoned and theoretical groundwork. Of course, Sandel is a champion of public philosophy and writes for a wider audience; but at least in this book he brings back the more well-structured theory development he is usually known for in his other books.

So meritocracy has failed in many regards. Sandel doesn't propose throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but rather proposes it be amended. One of merit's demerits is not just the increasing inequality divide, where the better off still manage to take most of the opportunity pie and provide significantally and statistically better chances for their progeny to get into top-tier schools—it's also the "hubris" of merit that leads to the better offs feeling they are completely deserving of their achievements, and those who haven't had similar successes are looked down on, and they, the downtrodden, in turn feel like failures in the meritocratic game that was always rigged against them. It's the justifiably felt resentment from those left behind that has led to the rise of right-leaning populism, where supporters are taken in by the promise of putting an end to those Dastardly Elites' globalization projects that outsource jobs out of the country and raise taxes to redistribute wealth to all those undeserving "takers," when all people wanted was to be respected as "makers"—to have an honest job, make an honest living, i.e., "the dignity of work."

The amendment, then, is to balance the liberal project of distributive justice (higher taxes for larger companies that are always more advantaged through various financial instruments to generate wealth without growth) with contributive justice:

we are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of our fellow citizens for the contributions we make. [...] [T]he fundamental human need is to be needed by those with whom we share a common life. The dignity of work consists in exercising our abilities to answer such needs.

(p.212)

It's not so clear how "distributive justice" and "contributive justice" relate, when the former seems like the more realized status quo of liberal democracies that can be legislated, and the latter is more like... what? An ideal? A vision? Sandel is not so clear in this regard, but when reading the notes he seems to suggest that the reader take a look at his Democracy's Discontent, which centers on civic virtue and nourishing discourse on the common good.