The Problem with the Winners

We live in a society that celebrates success and mythifies the epic of seeking it. Think of the almost religious aura around startups and their founders, the endless storytelling of self-made billionaires, the cult of hustle. Behind this obsession with success lies a belief that is more insidious than it seems: the idea that if you’ve made it, you deserved it. And if you haven’t, it’s probably your fault.

In The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, Michael Sandel offers a deep and eye-opening reflection on this belief system, meritocracy, and shows how it has quietly become one of the wicked problems of our time. It is a system that promises fairness but delivers inequality. That flatters the winners but humiliates the rest. And that, instead of holding societies together, contributes to tearing them apart.

Sandel defines merit as “a person’s deservingness of success, based on their talents and efforts.” On paper, this sounds reasonable. But in practice, it becomes a justification for privilege and a moral judgement on failure. The problem, as Sandel sees it, lies in two psychological consequences: the hubris of the elites, who come to believe they fully earned their place at the top, and the humiliation of those left behind, who internalise their status as a personal failure.

This cultural shift didn’t happen by accident. Sandel traces it back to the neoliberal era, when political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US promoted a vision of society where market value was treated as moral value. Thatcher, in particular, drew inspiration from the economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek, who argued that free markets were not only efficient but morally just. In this logic, price reflects value, wealth signals virtue. The result is a conflation of economic success with moral worth, and the rise of a society that judges people by how the market rewards them.

This market-centric morality was reinforced by a liberal political philosophy that, in the name of neutrality, avoided deeper questions about the common good. Sandel critiques this position as a moral abdication. By refusing to engage in public debates about virtue, meaning and collective purpose, liberalism created a vacuum where market logic could dominate unchallenged.

Meanwhile, progressive politics failed to offer a convincing alternative. Instead of resisting the meritocratic ideal, they embraced it. They replaced solidarity with social mobility. “You can make it if you try” became the rallying cry. No one embodied this narrative more than Barack Obama, whose rhetoric of rising turned meritocracy into a promise of fairness and redemption. But this promise only applied to the winners. For the majority who don’t hold elite credentials or access to the top, the same logic translated into exclusion, loss of dignity, and mounting resentment.

Sandel argues that this failure to question the ideology of merit has contributed to the backlash we have seen in recent years, the resentment that fuelled Trump’s rise in the United States and drove the UK to Brexit. When entire groups feel that their contributions are invisible, that their work is not respected, and that the system is rigged in favour of the credentialed class, trust in democracy erodes.

At the heart of the book lies a fundamental idea: a just society is not one that merely distributes rewards to those who “deserve” them, but one that ensures everyone feels their contribution is valued. This requires more than policy tweaks. It calls for a cultural reorientation.

Instead of clinging to meritocratic ideals, Sandel argues for a shift toward recognising the dignity of all work, not just knowledge-based or managerial labour. He calls for a politics of the common good, grounded in solidarity, mutual respect, and civic virtue. It is a politics that recognises our interdependence and reclaims moral reasoning as part of democratic life.

This is not only a political argument. It is an ethical and cultural one. And it speaks directly to the world of business.

Sandel’s book is a crucial contribution in an age marked by polarisation, competition, and a zero-sum logic that pervades both social and economic life. While framed as a philosophical critique, it carries a clear challenge for business and business leaders.

Companies, through their cultures, reward systems, and narratives of success, often reinforce a narrow view of merit. But they could choose differently. They could become part of the solution. There is an unmet societal need, one felt by the majority, not the minority: the need to be seen and valued as a meaningful contributor to the whole.

Business leaders who take this seriously may find that Sandel’s diagnosis opens new questions and new possibilities. It is a call to rethink the role of business in society, not just as a generator of profit, but as a builder of recognition, inclusion, and shared worth.

Michael Sandel (2022). The Tyranny of Merit : What’s Become of the Common Good? Penguin. 288 pages. ISBN 9780141991177