When one looks back, in a few months or years, and attempts to understand how Carney’s liberal government so utterly failed, the Air Canada strike will probably be part of the story.
After slashing the carbon tax — against the well thought-through but manifestly vacuous arguments set out in his book — Carney is now ignoring another principle he set out, that of economic justice.
On what planet does a government think that the FIRST response to a strike is to order workers back to work and to order arbitration (at the request of the employer), after it refused calls for an arbitrated agreement (when employees requested it)? Not only does the government, on this planet, effectively suspend the right to strike, it interprets existing laws solely in accordance with employer preferences.
On what planet is it OK for a corporation that benefits from a state-backed (quasi-)monoply, a company that made over $1 billon in profits in 2024, and that even has enough cash to buy-back shares, to plead poverty when its flight attendants ask to be paid for work they perform on the ground?
The planet is Canada.
Growing discontent
There is a sense of complacency in Canada that somehow ‘we’ are insultated from the discontent and anger with elites that has fueled the rise of Trump, Brexit, Orban, Le Pen and other politicians (and policies).
These politics, contemptuously labelled ‘populist’ by many amongst the educated elites, reflect the feeling, held by many people excluded from the elite, that their work is not valued and that their failure to succeed financially is a sign of their absence of worth.
If a system is designed in such a way that it signals to many people that they are worthless, then little wonder that anger and resentment rise.
Carney is playing with fire by so blatantly advertising his disdain for common workers, and by not even allowing that these workers are making a coherent argument, that they have a right to strike (or do they… apparently not), and that negociations should meaningfully engage before they are suspended.
The dark side of meritocracy
Recently, authors such as Michael Sandel, Daniel Markovits, and Hale Russel & Patterson have synthesized and made explicit a strong argument about how the disdain shown by meritocratic elites (of which central bankers are part!) has undermined the neo-liberal concensus1.
This concensus enshrines two key ideas (which, interestingly, are not unique to neoliberalism, but which neoliberalism has made central):
- that economic value is the same as social value (so the social value of a nurse, for instance, is lower than that of a casino owner, since nurses earn less; so the social value of a $15 000 000 Westmount mansion is greater than that of twenty $300 000 units of affordable housing, because the latter are only worth $6 000 000);
- that economic success is meritocratic: you succeed because you deserve it, and, by extension, you fail because you deserve it (so the owner who can afford the $15 000 000 mansion deserves it – and this is socially desirable – even though it diverts resources away from affordable units, whose potential occupiers are less deserving because they have less money).
The problem with these ideas is that they breed resentment, as Michael Young foresaw almost 70 years ago in his book the Rise of Meritocracy.
Young – as well as the more recent critics of meritocracy – argue that it is not possible for a society to indefinitely maintain that the financially successful deserve their wealth (however it has been acquired and whatever the moral and social value of their activities and consumption); nor is it possible to indefinitely maintain that the financially poor deserve their poverty (whatever the moral or social value of their activities and whatever the consequences of their poverty).
An individualistic society where the elite believes it deserves all it can get and where solidarity with those who don’t succeed is a moral failure (after all, they also get what they deserve) ceases to be a ‘society’: there is no more common good.
Carney’s government shows its disdain for workers: at what medium-term cost?
By showing its disdain for workers, by not even considering that Air Canada workers are making, at least prima facie, a good point (why should they be expected to work for free?), Carney’s government is revealing its elitist tendencies.
Of course, in the short term, it can bludgeon workers back to work: it has the law on its side, and many people, however sympathetic with flight attendants, also need to travel. So there will be support for this bludgeoning, which I understand.
But in the longer term, and in a climate where many people outside the elites have been emboldened (and are rightfully angry), can Carney be sure that he is not mis-reading the situation.
Is he pouring fuel on the populist flames by ignoring the basic dignity of non-elite workers, and, furthermore, by advertising it?
Should he not read – and act upon – some of his own arguments?
***
1 There are two main argumens against meritocracy (and many other ones, elaborated in the books I mention).
The first argument against meritocracy is that, however ‘merit’ is assessed, merit partly rests on luck. Luck can be genetic, it can be family-nurture, it can be place-of-birth, it can be timing (e.g. your talent happens to be in demand when you come of age), it can be predisposition (e.g. you have the energy and fortitude to work hard). Merit also partly rests on hard work and good decisions: but ‘meritocracy’ assumes that merit rests solely on hard work and good decisions (and, furthermore, that these can be measured and assessed). Within neoliberalism, it is the market that measures and assesses merit, aided and abetted by educational institutions. Thus, having more money (and being educated at ‘elite’ colleges) have become measures of merit and of personal worth: by extension, lack of money (and/or ‘elite’ education) strips people of personal worth.
The second argument is that, even if one chooses to ignore that merit partly rests on luck, no-one’s achievements are individual. Elon Musk made a collosal fortune thanks to decades of government-funded research (see Mazucatto, 2013, The Entrepreneurial State), thanks to municipalities and their workers who built the roads that Teslas roll upon, thanks to people who collect garbage, who janitor schools, who drive trucks, who grow food, etc… The success of each member of the elite (this incudes entrepreneurs, professionals, financiers, academics…) is contingent upon the work of wider society. The market/academic/professional system merely rewards what is in high demand and/or low supply (which brings us back to luck), and concentrates gains on the few people who control the sought-after goods, knowledge or skills (individualised rewards). The narrative of ‘merit’ tells us that these individuals deserve their rewards, and that all others – despite their contributions – deserve their absence of success.
Both of these arguments show how meritocracy is corrosive of social cohesion. When large parts of the populaion ‘have no merit’, and when ‘merit’ seems to become hereditary (there is declining social and financial mobility in the Global North, especially in the USA but also in Canada), tensions arise.
If one accepts these arguments against meritocracy, then elites should dial down their hubris, and – because of the contingencies and social value that underpin their success – should respect and value the contributions of all members of society. This would include, but is not limited to, accepting as normal the taxation of considerable parts of their wealth (but not all – after all, some economic rewards are associated with hard work, and some people seek these rewards more than others), sufficient to ensure that all members of society benefit from a sense of worth and security, whatever their particular skills and luck.
Richard Shearmur 