The book catches some of the political and intellectual winds of the last decade, correctly senses that much of the social strife can be traced down to economics, but fails to engage with economics. Nevertheless, the book is a useful resource in the "what I think people around me think (or should think)" genre.
Philosophy can be theoretical or empirical. Theory builds logical structures to derive prescriptions from a handful of axioms and to cross-check axioms for consistency. Empirics makes inferences about what kind of a society people (think they) would like to live in. The Tyranny of Merit is empirics relies on one observation, the book's credentialed author.
The author's fundamental observation is that people have become rude to each other. The credentialed deride high school dropouts, the coastal elite despises the fly-over elite, and the Ivy Leaguer taunts the community colleague graduate. Politics has lost its civility. Instead of addressing bullying, the book proposes making everyone equal, so that there is nothing to be bullied for.
Narration is OK at 2x the speed.
