We experimentally elicit views of what exploitation is from over 2,000 subjects. Our experimental design does not test existing theories of exploitation. Rather, it focuses on more fundamental properties that are the building blocks for these theories. We find, first, that exploitation is not a vacuous concept: Not all economic interactions are deemed exploitative. Second, contrary to several of the major approaches in the literature, both inequalities in the distribution of economic gains and asymmetric power relations contribute to exploitative relations. What matters most is the interaction of power and inequality: The effect of both elements together is significantly greater than the sum of each on their own. Finally, and perhaps remarkably, we found no major differences in exploitation ascriptions between experts and lay subjects. These findings have implications for the ethics of employment contracts, particularly in the context of sweatshop labor.

We consider the apparent inability of theories of exploitation to capture common intuitions about structural exploitation. For example, it seems that consumers participate in the exploitation of sweatshop workers, but there is no direct transaction between the parties. This poses a problem for transactional accounts of exploitation. Many address this problem by appealing to structural exploitation. Existing structural accounts fall, primarily, into two families: weak structural exploitation and strong structural exploitation. We argue neither appropriately captures intuitions about sweatshops. Weak accounts can capture aggregate inequalities but fail to consider relationships or discrete connections. Strong accounts, on the other hand, are sensitive to relationships between exploiters and exploitees, but too demanding about what it takes to exploit to capture consumers' role in sweatshops. We propose a third option, 'moderate structural exploitation', that fits 'between' existing approaches. Moderate structural exploitation focuses on relationships between the exploited and their exploiter (unlike weak accounts), without appealing to overly strong conditions for who counts as an exploiter (like strong accounts do). We then show that our moderate structural account can not only accommodate intuitions about sweatshops, but also helps assess the exploitation of teachers in the US public education system.

Journal Article Exploitation as Domination? Get access Exploitation as Domination: What Makes Capitalism UnjustBy Nicholas Vrousalis Oxford University Press, 2023. 198 pp Benjamin Ferguson, Benjamin Ferguson University of Warwick UK https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8197-0364 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roberto Veneziani Roberto Veneziani School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London UK r.veneziani@qmul.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Analysis, anae007, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anae007 Published: 03 April 2024

Abstract Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where transactors’ consent to a transaction is morally valid, it is also morally transformative and overrides distributive unfairness’s pro tanto wrong. Thus, wrongful exploitation requires morally invalid consent.

This chapter surveys accounts of what exploitation is and addresses consumers' responsibility in cases of exploitation. First, I outline and critique distributive and relational accounts of exploitation, as well as substantive and procedural accounts of transactional fairness. Next, I argue that even though consumers are not directly responsible for exploitation, they can be complicit in the exploitation performed by others.

What is wrong with colonialism? The standard-albeit often implicit-answer to this question has been that colonialism was wrong because it violated the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, where territorial rights were grounded on acquisition theories. Recently, the standard view has come under attack: according to critics, acquisition based accounts do not provide solid theoretical grounds to condemn colonial relations. Indeed, historically they were used tojustifycolonialism. Various alternative accounts of the wrong of colonialism have been developed. According to some, colonialism involved a violation of territorial rights grounded on legitimate state theory. Others reject all explanations of colonialism's wrongfulness based on territorial rights, and argue that colonial practices were wrong because they departed from ideals of economic, social, and political association. In this article, we articulate and defend the standard view against critics: colonialism involved a procedural wrong; this wrong is not the violation of standards of equality and reciprocity, but the violation of territorial rights; and the best foundation for such territorial rights is acquisition based, not legitimacy based. We argue that this issue is not just of historical interest, it has relevant implications for the normative evaluation of contemporary inequalities.

This article critically assesses the moral arguments that speak in favour of three consumer options: buying local food, buying global (non-local) food, and buying global food while also purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of food transportation. We argue that because the offsetting option allows one to provide economic benefits to the poorest food workers while also mitigating the environmental impact of food transportation it is morally superior to the alternatives.

We argue that permissibility-based solutions to the paradox of supererogation encounter a nested dilemma. Such approaches solve the paradox by distinguishing moral and rational permissions. If they do not also include a bridge condition that relates these two permissions, then they violate a very plausible monotonicity condition. If they do include a bridge condition, then permissibility-based solutions either amount to rational satisficing or they collapse back into the classical account of supererogation and fail to resolve the paradox.

A traditional-but increasingly unconvincing-critique of markets challenges their superiority in terms of generating welfare.After all, markets can be alienating, they can generate inequality, and, arguably, allow for the exchange of goods that ought not to be traded.If these effects collectively made people who live in market societies worse off than those who do not, the implementation of markets would be unacceptable.However, while markets do have some of these negative effects, the welfare and material benefits they provide are massive.In Do Markets Corrupt our Morals?Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi provide substantial evidence for the conclusion that not only are "people who live in market societies […] wealthier, healthier, happier, and better connected than people who live in nonmarket societies" but these benefits are available to the rich and poor alike: "The least advantaged in market societies are better off than the least advantaged in nonmarket societies and may be better off than the most well-off in some nonmarket societies" (13).However, responding to this traditional critique is not Storr and Choi's primary aim.Instead, they focus on a more nuanced critique.This critique accepts that markets produce the aforementioned material benefits, but counters that the real problem with markets is that they come at the cost of our ethical integrity.Call this the virtue-based critique (VC).The VC claims that VC1 "Vice is more prevalent in market societies than in nonmarket societies and virtue is less prevalent in market societies than in nonmarket societies.

This paper argues that two single‐factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two‐factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non‐distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their arguments for the non‐necessity of unfairness are unconvincing. This paper defends a two factor account according to which A exploits B iff A gains unfairly from B and either A believes that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B, or A is culpably unaware that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B. This account avoids the problems of non‐distributive approaches and also delivers the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy.

Many analyses of exploitation focus on the concept as a problematic interaction between two parties. These theories focus on the way in which exploiters dominate (Vrousalis 2013), take advantage of...