Who serves the coffee and who drinks it. Scholz misses the mark and the context

I had hoped we’d got rid of Michael Sandel; I’d hoped the quip about the ‘Tirannia del merito’ – which gave its title to one of his 2020 essays that proved so successful everywhere it even made it onto Barack Obama’s recommended reading list, as he was understandably embittered by Donald Trump’s election victory – had gone out of fashion. Instead, Sandel resurfaces in Olaf Scholz’s comments in *Il Corriere*; the former German chancellor gives an interview to Mara Gergolet in which he argues that the global problem facing the left lies in the fact that “the enormous expansion of education has produced a new social divide. We must overcome this and return to seeing ourselves as all equal. Someone who works in a restaurant kitchen or serves an espresso at a table is worth exactly as much as the person drinking that espresso’.

Scholz alludes to one of Sandel’s two key points: an intrinsic dark side to meritocracy that leads those who do not achieve professional fulfilment to feel guilty about their own failure. If we say that those who work hard are entitled to social advancement, then those who fall behind or remain stagnant have not worked hard enough; to put it more crudely, those who have secured the privilege of ordering their coffee feel they are worth more than those who serve it to them. Striking though it may be, Scholz’s example does not hold water because, within the European context of an interview with a former German chancellor by an Italian newspaper, the very framework of Sandel’s theory – which is entirely American – collapses: it is in the US that, from the very earliest childhood, citizens are brought up on the dichotomy (which Trump himself feeds on in abundance) between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – a term that, in poorly done dubbing, is translated as ‘loser’ when ‘unlucky bloke’ would be more appropriate; it is the rhetoric underlying the teen dramas we have feasted on in the telly, with elections for student council president, the gruesome theatrics surrounding the homecoming queen and the like. It is a deeply Calvinist rhetoric, according to which prosperity is seen as a sign of the Lord’s favour towards the elect, whilst the poor serve as a warning of what may befall the undeserving.

However, Calvino died in 1564, and reading yet another interview that glosses over him is tiresome; it would be challenging to find a single bar in Europe where the waiter does not earn as much—or is not worth as much—as the occasional customer to whom he serves coffee, if not more. More accurately put is the other point raised by Sandel, namely that merit is in itself a flawed criterion, since there is no such thing as a level playing field; there are differing conditions that influence outcomes, creating rankings in which the positioning of winners and losers does not depend solely on their abilities. It is an indisputable fact, and I shall reveal to you that it is called the world: that is to say, the intrinsic state of nature, which manifests itself even in savage man, with a disparity in resources due to differences in physical strength (if, in addition to Sandel, one reads that other Calvinist, Rousseau, one discovers that he discusses this in his “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”, dated 1754). Nevertheless, I do not believe that the solution to eliminating unequal conditions lies in abolishing the distribution of rewards based on merit.

Consider a thought experiment. A young boy is born into a disadvantaged background but lives in a society that values merit; the disadvantage he starts with means he can only partially achieve what he is entitled to, but the incentive drives him to strive and give his all, even though he knows he will achieve the bare minimum. He will end up as a customer at a café less luxurious than he deserves: it is not fair, but it is acceptable. A parallel young boy, from an equally disadvantaged background, lives instead in a society that does not value merit, but hands out rewards indiscriminately to bridge the initial gap; the disadvantage will be bridged, but he will have no incentive to strive to make the most of his talent, for his own benefit and that of society. Convinced that he is entitled to be a customer at a luxury café, he will end up working as a waiter out of laziness. Is this what the Left wants?