This paper investigates philosophically the question of whether or not college and university athletes in the USA are doing something morally wrong should they terminate their college or university experience prior to graduation and enter the professional athletic ranks. Various moral arguments are brought to bear in order to attempt to shed light on this issue. One reason why such athletes ?turn professional? before they graduate is the perceived economic exploitation they experience as essentially underpaid workers earning much (...) revenue for their respective institutions. But who is exploiting whom here? Is it just student athletes who are exploited by the system? I expand the reasoning about the exploitation of intercollegiate athletics to include not just student athletes, but their supporting colleges and universities. In the end, it is proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association and similar academically related athletic agencies should permit and encourage each of their constituent institutions as a matter of policy to protect themselves (and their supporting taxpayers, in the cases of public institutions) contractually from economic exploitation by professional sports franchises. Thus the question of student athletes leaving college for professional sports contracts has hidden beneath it questions of private professional sports franchises? exploitation of the institutions with which such student athletes are affiliated. (shrink)

I T I S S T A R T L I N G T O realize that the concept of economic exploitation, which has been the focus of intense philosophical debate for what seems like decades now, was barely touched on in John Rawls's 1971 masterwork, A Theory o f Justice, the book that ushered in the present era of Anglo - American social and political philosophy. The subject was broached just once by Rawls, and only to be (...) dismissed as being of such secondary importance as to be "out of place here."1 The concept, however, had begun to attract the attention of a generation of students and young faculty who were rediscovering Marx, to the point that it could not much longer be ignored, not even in Harvard Yard. Robert Nozick, in his famous juniorcolleague, neoconservative rebuttal to the liberal Rawls, devoted a full nine pages to attacking "Marxian exploitation," concluding that "Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.". (shrink)

For Marx, capitalism depends upon and perpetuates a system of relationships whereby members of one class of persons, capitalists, enjoys extensive and pervasive social and economic advantages over others. But on Marx’s analysis, this system of being-taken-advantage-of—this system of economic exploitation—is not to be understood by appeal to discrete incidents of fraud, bad deals, theft, or under-remuneration. Rather, the central contention of Marx’s analysis, the contention analyzed, developed, and evaluated here, is that economic exploitation is (...) class exploitation, a phenomenon that occurs only within and because of the complex system of capitalist production. And it is because this system presupposes a set of oppressive social and economic ownership relations that are not freely chosen and yet govern the terms of participation in the economy and polity that it can be appropriately described as wrong or unjust. (shrink)

Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State offers the first new, liberal theory of economic justice to appear in more than 30 years. The theory presented is designed to offer an alternative to the most popular liberal egalitarian theories of today and aims to be acceptable to both right and left libertarians too.

The economic and moral defense of sweatshops given by Powell and Zwolinski has been criticized in two recent papers. Coakley and Kates focus on putative weaknesses in the logic of Powell’s and Zwolinski’s argument. Preiss :55–82, 2014) argues that, even granting the validity of their economic argument, Powell’s and Zwolinski’s defense is without force when viewed from a Kantian republican viewpoint. We are concerned that sweatshop critics have misinterpreted the economic literature and overstated the conclusions that follow (...) from their ethical premises. We show that the best understanding of the current economic literature supports Powell’s and Zwolinski’s conclusions about the negative effects of sweatshop wage regulation, and that it is unreasonable to reject economic analysis in moral argument against sweatshops even from a Kantian perspective. Additionally, we defend the theory of exploitation as unfairness given by Wertheimer, and show how economic analysis can be applied to that theory to identify cases of sweatshop exploitation. (shrink)

:In response to Roemer's reformulation of the Marxian concept of exploitation in terms of comparative wealth distributions, Vrousalis treats economic exploitation as an explicitly relational phenomenon in which one party takes advantage of the other's economic vulnerability in order to extract a net benefit. This paper offers a critical assessment of Vrousalis's account, prompting a revised formulation that is analysed in the context of a matching and bargaining model. This analysis yields precise representations of Vrousalis's conditions (...) of economic vulnerability and economic exploitation and facilitates comparison to the alternative conceptions of Marx and Roemer. (shrink)

This book brings together recent work on the topic of exploitation from philosophy, political science, and economics in one volume, organised around three main questions: what is exploitation?, why is exploitation wrong?, and what should we do about it? These questions are increasingly relevant in public policy discussions. The past decade has witnessed the rise of populism and an increasing sense that politics is a game rigged to benefit certain classes of persons at the expense of others. (...) Interestingly, this sense of unfairness has been shared across the political spectrum though, of course, the left and right differ in both their moral diagnosis and their political prescription. Current debates over minimum wage laws, immigration reform, and undue corporate influence on politics can all be understood as drawing on and developing these concerns over exploitative political treatment. This book also draws upon the natural opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement that the topic of exploitation presents. Questions about exploitation often involve not only philosophical issues, but economic and political ones as well. The contributors to this volume add to that breadth of knowledge. With the re-emergence of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) as a burgeoning field of academic inquiry, now is the perfect time to explore issues of exploitation in an interdisciplinary, public-policy focused context. This books is essential reading for anyone interested in exploitation theory, and in PPE more generally. (shrink)

Working from a "capitalist" theory of exploitation, based on a neo-classical account of economic value, I argue that guest workers are exploited. It may be objected, however, that since they are not citizens, any inequality that stems from their status as non-citizens is morally unobjectionable. Although host countries are under no moral obligation to admit guest workers as citizens, there are independent reasons that call for the extension of economic rights – the freedom of occupation in particular (...) – to guestworkers. Since the cause of unequal exchange rests in the fact that guest workers are deprived of these rights, rather than in their exclusion from citizenship per se, I conclude that they are exploited even if their exclusion from citizenship may be justified. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a conceptual connection between economic exploitation and domination. If I am right, then exploitation is a form of domination, rather than a form of distributive injustice. It follows that the contemporary infatuation of many analytical Marxists with distributive injustice is misguided, and their attention is better spent studying relations of power, in particular the possibility of abstract forms of domination.

Various government efforts to address the exploitation of street beggars have yet to be fully effective, especially in Medan City. This research aims to explore and understand how the practice of street begging exploitation and its social and economic impacts. The method used is qualitative research with a case study approach. The data was collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions involving the Medan City government, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders, especially street child beggars. The (...) results showed that the exploitation of street children in Medan City continues to increase, which reflects the problems of poverty and poor child protection. The characteristics of street child beggars in Medan are diverse, with different modes of begging. On the other hand, the Medan City Government has enacted Regional Regulation No. 6 Year 2003 to address this issue, but its implementation could have been more optimal. As the responsible party, the Social Affairs Office of Medan City has made various efforts, such as coaching and rehabilitation, but the number of street children is increasing. This research concludes that a more integrated approach and cooperation with related parties is needed to address the problem of street beggars' exploitation effectively. (shrink)

Exploitation is interacting with another in a way that takes unfair advantage of that person. Exploitation is thought to be morally wrong even when it would bring about the best attainable outcome, hence conflicts with the consequentialist morality that holds one ought always to do whatever would bring about the best outcome. This essay aims to reconcile norms against exploitation and act consequentialism. A puzzle about exploitation is raised and resolved.

Scholarship aiming to describe the wrongness of exploitation, especially when it is voluntary and mutually beneficial, has increased greatly in recent years. In this paper, I expand the scope of this discussion by highlighting a set of additional ethical concerns associated with many cases of mutually voluntary and beneficial exploitation. Specifically, I argue that the phenomenon of persons desperately seeking out and gratefully accepting exploitative interactions raises special moral concerns. The element of voluntariness is key to understanding how (...) and why some exploitative interactions are degrading to exploitees. When an exploitative offer does not allow the exploitee sufficient progress toward a decent minimum of human functioning, these offers can create what I call a 'demeaning choice', where the exploitee may either accept the status quo or accept an offer that improves the exploitee's insufficiently. In these cases, the exploitee's participation in the interaction contributes to its demeaning quality, creating a form of `surface endorsement' of the treatment that she receives. (shrink)

This research paper attempts to get pragmatic way to deal with few questions like, 'Will Indian Economic thoughts be able to give directions to crises-ridden global economic system?', 'Can India show solutions to the World's Present Socio-economical crises?'' and What are the Alternatives available before mankind to avoid economic crises?' The concept of economic exploitation or “exploitation” which has been the focal point of solemn philosophical debate is one of the favorite nouns in the (...) glossary of critics of the free market economy. The strongest version of the claim that the free market necessarily involves exploitation is that of Karl Marx. The aim of this research paper is to bring to the notice of economist, policy makers, research scholars, professors and students of economics as well as of philosophy and layman, that what kind of solution, a Philosopher from India, like Prof. Surendra S. Barlingay has to offer to the discipline of economics at large. (shrink)

Contemporary theoretical discussions of exploitation are dominated by thinkers in the liberal and Marxian traditions. Exploitation: From Practice to Theory, pushes past these traditional and binary explanations, to focus on unjust practises that both depend on and perpetuate inequalities central to exploitation. -/- Using real-world examples, the chapters in this collection address key questions, including, in what ways are exploitation practices globalised, racialized and gendered? How do cases of organ selling, price gouging and commercial gestational surrogacy (...) change our understandings of exploitation? What possible social and economic remedies do these new conceptions prescribe? -/- Case studies in this volume span the globe, dealing with developed and developing countries alike and in a variety of national and transnational contexts. (shrink)

Relatively subtle forms of exploitation of human subjects may arise from the inefficiency or incompetence of a researcher, from the existence of a power imbalance between principal and subject, or from the uneven distribution of research risks among various segments of the population. A powerful and knowledgeable person (or institution) may perpetrate the exploitation of an unempowered and ignorant individual even without intending to. There is an ethical burden on the former to protect the interests of the vulnerable. (...) Excessive or insufficient compensation may be exploitative. However, genuine economic imperatives motivating needy volunteers have to be considered. These forms of exploitation should be appreciated in the context of social and cultural factors suggesting that the relationship between researcher and subject cannot properly be appraised as a contractual undertaking. While compliance with pertinent codes and regulations minimises the exploitative potential, they cannot be enforced in a way that does not recognise a society's peculiar characteristics. The experience with some Filipino cultural traits illustrates this point. (shrink)

Despite its title, Alan Wertheimer’s new book is not another tiresome exploration of Marxist economic theories. Indeed, there is virtually no extended discussion of Marxism at all, since Wertheimer believes that what is unique to that perspective is highly problematic, given that when Marxists simply assert that capitalists do exploit wage laborers they are appealing to “the ordinary notion that one party exploits another when it gets unfair and undeserved benefits from its transactions or relationships with others”. His goal (...) is to analyze this ordinary sense of exploitation, to explore in detail some of the many forms it can take, and to begin some serious thinking about what he terms its moral weight and its moral force. This groundbreaking work, the first book-length treatment of its subject from a broadly analytic standpoint, should do much to disabuse non-Marxist philosophers of the notion that exploitation is largely peripheral to the central questions of moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. Such exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power to benefit oneself at the expense of others. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making other less powerful than you, in order to get them to benefit (...) you more than they ought to. This account of exploitation is appealing because it simultaneously captures three morally significant dimensions of exploitation—its material and social background, the relational (interpersonal and systemic) attitudes it enacts, and the final distributive results it generates. Exploitation is indeed a multidimensional social process. The flipside of the proposed critical characterization of this process is a positive ideal of solidaristic empowerment in the allocation and use of economic power, which the paper articulates in terms of the socialist Abilities/Needs Principle (“from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”). The Abilities/Needs Principle is grounded in human dignity. (shrink)

This paper analyses exploitation and class formation in a dynamic context. An intertemporal model of a subsistence economy is set up and, among other results, it is proved that, in an interior equilibrium, Differential Ownership of (Scarce) Productive Assets is an inherent feature of a capitalist economy, while exploitation tends to disappear in the long run. Asset inequality is therefore proved to be a normatively secondary (though causally primary) wrong. It is also argued that these results raise several (...) doubts about the possibility of providing robust micro-foundations to Marxian concepts by means of Walrasian general equilibrium models. (shrink)

Child labor is often condemned as a form of exploitation. I explore how the notion of exploitation, as used in everyday language, can be made precise in economic models of child labor. Exploitation is defined relative to a specific social welfare function. I first show that under the standard dynastic social welfare function, which is commonly applied to intergenerational models, child labor is never exploitative. In contrast, under an inclusive welfare function, which places additional weight on (...) the welfare of children, child labor is always exploitative. Neither welfare function captures the more gradual distinctions that common usage of the term exploitation allows. I resolve this conflict by introducing a welfare function with minimum altruism, in which child labor in a given family is judged relative to a specific social standard. Under this criterion, child labor is exploitative only in families where the parent (or guardian) displays insufficient altruism towards the child. I argue that this welfare function best captures the conventional concept of exploitation and has useful properties for informing political choices regarding child labor. (shrink)

The paper refers to selected issues of exploitation in the face of justice. The analysis is based on the definitions of exploitation contained in the Penal and Civil Codes. The main goal is the identification of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the recognition of exploitation as being unjust. A supplementary question will refer to a specific type of justice which should be considered in this case. In this respect, we should consider retributive, distributive and social justice. (...) Another important factor in this regard is the accepted theory of value. In the presented considerations, we will focus on the labour theory of value. The principal issue can be expressed by the questions whether exploitation is ipso facto unjust and how the phenomena of exploitation and justice are related to each other. (shrink)

We cooperate with other people despite the risk of being exploited or hurt. If future artificial intelligence (AI) systems are benevolent and cooperative toward us, what will we do in return? Here we show that our cooperative dispositions are weaker when we interact with AI. In nine experiments, humans interacted with either another human or an AI agent in four classic social dilemma economic games and a newly designed game of Reciprocity that we introduce here. Contrary to the hypothesis (...) that people mistrust algorithms, participants trusted their AI partners to be as cooperative as humans. However, they did not return AI's benevolence as much and exploited the AI more than humans. These findings warn that future self-driving cars or co-working robots, whose success depends on humans' returning their cooperativeness, run the risk of being exploited. This vulnerability calls not just for smarter machines but also better human-centered policies. (shrink)

One of the central controversies in normative business ethics is the question whether transactions and economic relationships can be wrongfully exploitative despite being mutually beneficial and consensual. This article argues that anyone who accepts a shareholder theory of business ethics should accept deontological constraints on mutually beneficial, consensual exploitation.

Debates about justice in political philosophy often ask which distributive end state is normatively desirable. The economic mechanisms that generate the ‘pie’ that is to be distributed are usually left unexplored. Mark R. Reiff’s new book, in contrast, asks what justice means within economic processes, and how changes in the framework of the economy could lead to more justice, including justice in the distributive sense. As such, Reiff’s account is in a line with other recent accounts such as (...) Dietsch’s discussion of competition and its effects on distribution, or the debates about property-owning democracy ; these are all attempts to open up the ‘black box’ of markets, as Dietsch puts it, and to think about justice before or while the pie is being baked.Reiff returns to an age-old idea: the idea of a just price, which he revives by developing a highly original account of exploitation as the use of intolerably unfair prices. Al .. (shrink)

Sweatshop labour is sometimes defended from critics by arguments that stress the voluntariness of the worker’s choice, and the fact that sweatshops provide a source of income where no other similar source exists. The idea is if it is exploitation—as their opponents charge—it is mutually beneficial and consensual exploitation. This defence appeals to the non-worseness claim (NWC), which says that if exploitation is better for the exploited party than neglect, it cannot be seriously wrong. The NWC renders (...) otherwise exploitative—and therefore morally wrong—transactions permissible, making the exploitation of the global poor a justifiable path to development. In this paper, I argue that the use of NWC for the case of sweatshops is misleading. After reviewing and strengthening the exploitation claims made concerning sweatshops, most importantly by refuting certain allegations that a micro-unfairness account of exploitation cannot evaluate sweatshop labour as exploitative, I then argue that even if this practice may seem permissible due to benefits otherwise unavailable to the global poor, there remains a duty to address the background conditions that make this form of wrong-doing possible, which the NWC cannot accommodate. I argue that the NWC denies this by unreasonably limiting its scope and is therefore incomplete, and ultimately unconvincing. (shrink)

Families and children are hidden victims of labor exploitation in the US economy across the economic spectrum. The Sabbath commandment, however, provides a theological basis for resisting this structural evil. In Karl Barth’s discussion of the commandment, Sabbath rest not only limits the scope of economic activity in human life but also sets the stage for reflection on the meaning and purpose of work. As a recurring reminder that human life is a gift to be lived in (...) joyful fellowship with God and neighbor, Sabbath observance can be a crucial practice to orient work toward the flourishing of individuals, families, and communities. (shrink)

The general idea of guilt aversion is that agents may be motivated to avoid letting others down, even at the expense of their own material payoff. Several experimental studies have documented behavior that is consistent with agents exhibiting guilt averse motivations in social interactions. However, there are strategic implications of guilt aversion, which can impact economic outcomes in important ways, that have yet to be explored. I introduce a game that admits the possibility for agents to induce guilt upon (...) others in a manner consistent with the method posited by Baumeister et al.. This game enables me to experimentally test whether agents attempt to exploit the guilt aversion of others by inducing guilt upon them, and whether agents are actually susceptible to this exploitation. Additionally, the design enables me to test whether agents exhibit higher degrees of trust when they are given such an opportunity to exploit the guilt aversion of others. The data suggest that agents do not attempt to fully exploit the guilt aversion of other agents by inducing guilt upon them; however, the data suggest that agents would have been susceptible to guilt induction. (shrink)

The notion of exploitation is prominent in political discourse and policy debates. It is central in analyses of labour relations, especially focusing on the weakest segments of the labour force including women and children. It features in controversies on surrogate motherhood, and on drug-testing and the price of life-saving drugs, especially in developing countries.

There are two opposing views concerning intuitive cases of wage exploitation. The first denies that they are cases of exploitation at all. It is based on the nonworseness claim: there is nothing wrong with a discretionary mutually beneficial employment relationship. The second is the reasonable view: some employment relationships can be exploitative even if employers have no duty towards their employees. This article argues that the reasonable view does not completely defeat defences of wage exploitation, because these (...) do not rely solely on the nonworseness claim. They also rely on the idea, popularised by Alan Wertheimer, that exploitation is a form of disequilibrium price occurring in defective markets. The article then proceeds to criticise Wertheimer’s account through neoclassical, new institutional, and Austrian economics. It concludes that considerations for economic efficiency are irrelevant to assessing intuitions regarding exploitation. (shrink)

Many business transactions and employment contracts are wrongfully exploitative despite being consensual and beneficial to both parties, compared with a nontransaction baseline. This form of exploitation can present governments with a dilemma. Legally permitting exploitation may send the message that the public condones it. In some economic conditions, coercively enforced antiexploitation law may harm the people it is intended to help. Under these conditions, a way out of the dilemma is to enact laws with provisions that lack (...) coercive enforcement. Noncoercive law would convey the state’s condemnation of wrongful exploitation without risking the harmful effects of coercively enforced law. It would also give firms and their agents a way of explaining nonexploitative pricing decisions to investors, and it may help give precise content to the moral duty to set prices and wages fairly. Governments should thus consider noncoercive law a viable component of their responses to exploitation. (shrink)

According to some accounts of exploitation, most notably Ruth Sample’s degradation-based account and Robert Goodin’s vulnerability-based account, exploitation occurs when an advantaged party fails to constrain their advantage in light of another’s disadvantage, regardless of the cause of this disadvantage. Because the duty of constraint in these accounts does not depend on the cause of the disadvantage, the advantaged’s duty of constraint is what I call a ‘come-what-may’ duty. I show that come-what-may duties create moral hazards that can (...) themselves be exploited by the disadvantaged parties. In such cases these accounts of exploitation are either self-frustrating or over-demanding. (shrink)

This book explores how traditional theories of economic justice, both from the libertarian right and the egalitarian left, have failed to appreciate the objection against exploitative behavior that would be possible through the exercise of property rights. This failure also underlies the recent plea for a so-called unconditional basic income.

In this review, I survey theoretical accounts of exploitation in business, chiefly through the example of low wage or sweatshop labor. This labor is associated with wages that fall below a living wage standard and include long working hours. Labor of this kind is often described as self-evidently exploitative and immoral (Van Natta 1995). But for those who defend sweatshop labor as the first rung on a ladder toward greater economic development, the charge that sweatshop labor is self-evidently (...) exploitative fails adequately to explain the nature of the alleged wrongdoing. While all sides might agree that poor working conditions are unfortunate and undesirable, defenders of sweatshop labor argue that they provide the best available employment alternative for some workers and the best chance at economic development for many low and middle income countries (LMICs). Some defenders of sweatshop labor even embrace the label of exploitation. <br><br>Unless there is a clear, widely understood account by which exploitation is a moral wrong, then charging a practice as exploitative will do little to advance debates over whether and why a practice is morally problematic. A considerable body of work has been developed applying a growing literature on exploitation to sweatshop labor. While many forms of moral wrong are associated with sweatshop labor, I will focus specifically on the worry that low wages allow relatively wealthy employers wrongfully to take advantage of or gain from relatively poor workers, especially in LMICs. In particular, I will focus on instances of alleged exploitation in employment relationships that are voluntary and mutually beneficial. I have two reasons for doing so. First, by restricting this review to voluntary and mutually beneficial instances of exploitation, I can isolate the moral wrong of exploitation from other moral wrongs, especially the wrongs of coercion and outright harms to workers. Second, the focus on mutually beneficial and voluntary relationships will allow for arguments that sweatshop labor is not only not exploitative, but is a morally praiseworthy means of helping to encourage economic growth in poor areas of the world and to provide jobs that pay better and are more stable than any existing alternatives.<br><br>In this review, I aim to accomplish three goals. First, I will provide an overview of the many different uses of the charge of exploitation in business practice through an examination of the uses of the term in the literature on sweatshop labor. While it is often not clear what kind of moral wrong is assumed to take place when the charge of exploitation is used, I will demonstrate that many distinct types of exploitation, connected to distinct moral wrongs, are used in the literature on sweatshop labor and elsewhere in business ethics. Specifically, I will identify two broad categories of exploitation—exploitation as unfairness and exploitation as the mere use of others—with subgroups under each main category of exploitation. Second, I will discuss which of these senses of exploitation are defensible as identifying clear moral wrongs that take place in the context of business and, specifically, sweatshop labor. As I will argue, not all uses of the charge of exploitation are capable of persuasively identifying clear moral wrongs. Moreover, there is not a single, clear type of exploitation that takes place in business but, rather, several distinct forms. Third, I will apply the lessons learned from my exploration of exploitation in sweatshop labor to other specific areas of business. As I will argue, there are multiple viable models of exploitation in the sweatshop literature that can illuminate exploitative practices of relatively well compensated employees, customers, suppliers, and entire communities. <br><br>While discussions of theories of exploitation tend to argue for a single, correct account of this moral wrong, my review of the literature on exploitation in sweatshop labor supports the conclusion that there are multiple defensible accounts of the moral wrong of exploitation. For this reason, those who would charge that a relationship is exploitative should specify the form of exploitation that they believe is taking place. (shrink)

This paper provides an economic justification for the exemption from liability for omissions in torts and for the exceptions to this exemption. It interprets the differential treatment of acts and omissions under tort law as a proxy for a more fundamental distinction between harms caused by multiple injurers, where each one can single-handedly prevent the harm, and harms caused by a single injurer. Since the overall cost to which a group of injurers is exposed is constant, attributing liability to (...) many injurers reduces the part each has to pay and, consequently, reduces each one’s incentives to take precautions. Broad exemption from liability for omissions is a way of carving a simple, practical rule to distinguish between the typical cases in which an agent can be easily selected and provided with sufficient incentives and cases in which there is a serious problem of dilution of liability. The exceptions to the rule exempting from liability for omissions are explained in terms of efficiency. The imposition of liability for omissions depends on the ability to identify a salient agent, i.e., to single out one or few liable agents and differentiate their role from that of others. Tort law designs three types of "salience rules." It either creates salience directly, or it can exploit salience created "naturally," or it can induce injurers to create salience voluntarily. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

ABSTRACTGlobal demand for human ova in in vitro fertilization has led to its expansion in countries with falling average incomes and rising female unemployment. Paid egg donation in the context of national, regional, and global inequalities has the potential to exploit women who are socioeconomically vulnerable, and indeed there is ample evidence that it does. Structural injustices that render women in middle-income countries – and even some high-income countries – economically vulnerable contribute to a context of ‘omissive coercion’ that is (...) morally troubling. When egg brokers or fertility clinics take advantage of these background structural injustices and prospective ova providers’ vulnerability in order to pay them less than they need to meet their livelihood needs, they engage in exploitation. Analyzing paid egg donation as a form of reproductive labor, however, can direct our attention to reforms that would reduce exploitative instances of this practice. In contrast to those who see... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a recent paper Alan Carter argues that the claim that workers’co‐operatives merely replace exploitation by employers with ‘self‐exploitation’is nonsense: the term ‘self‐exploitation’is self‐contradictory. He maintains that the only form of exploitation to which a workers’co‐operative may be said to be subject is ‘market‐exploitation’by dominant economic actors who are external to the co‐operative. I argue that these conclusions are mistaken. While the concept of ‘market‐exploitation’is not without value, it is difficult to operationalise. (...) While the concept of ‘self‐exploitation’is, understood literally, incoherent, the claims defended by some of the users of this term can be made conceptually respectable. (shrink)

We consider the potential contribution of economics to an interdisciplinary research partnership between sociology and neuroscience. We correct a misunderstanding in previous literature over the understanding of humans as ‘social animals’, which has in turn led to misidentification of the potential relevance of game theory and the economics of networks to the social neuroscience project. Specifically, it has been suggested that these can be used to model mindreading. We argue that mindreading is at best a derivative and special basis for (...) social coordination, whereas the general and pervasive phenomenon on which it depends is mindshaping. We then outline the foundations of Conditional Game Theory as a mathematical model of mindshaping, which extends game theory without displacing its classic solution concepts, and which exploits economists’ experience in modeling networks. (shrink)

The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. (...) For example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. In Study 2, we hypothesized that having neutral preferences (e.g., preferring neither increased nor decreased spending on border security) would lead to more accurate assessments overall, compared to having a strong initial preference; however, we did not find evidence for such an effect. In Study 3, we tested whether providing participants with possible functional forms of the policies (e.g., the policy takes some time to work or initially has a negative influence but eventually a positive influence) would lead to a smaller influence of motivated reasoning but found little evidence for this effect. This research advances the field of causal learning by studying the role of prior preferences, and in doing so, integrates the fields of causal learning and motivated reasoning using a novel explore‐exploit task. (shrink)

As a result of the increasing economical exploitation of outer space, humanity faces a new challenge that, as well as having economic advantages, also entails a great many ecological hazards. At present, the human race is encroaching on outer space, particularly in the form of almost 5000 active satellites and the corresponding space debris they produce. For the large part, this debris burns up on entering the Earth’s atmosphere, yet time and again it still does cause damage. However, (...) this could change dramatically if, as is now foreseeable, further uses of outer space, such as tourism, so-called satellite mega-constellations, regular transport flights to the moon or even Mars and the extraction of water and valuable rocks from celestial bodies, are expanded. There is a danger that ecological damage like that of the earlier phases of economic development will become externalised and ultimately pose a threat to the whole of humanity. Sautter’s ‘global “sustainability trilemma”’ remains unresolved. This trilemma consists in the fact that, in political resolutions, ‘the growth of resource-intensive prosperity is weighted far more highly than the conservation of functioning ecosystems and the implementation of inter- and intragenerational “justice”’ and that there are ‘up until now no efficient and ethically acceptable solutions’ for this problem. In this situation, it is therefore more important that rules for the sustainable use of outer space be established and enshrined as legally binding so that it becomes possible to minimise or even to preclude negative ecological consequences.Contribution: Although the commercial use of outer space does not seem to be a crucial point, it marks a new step of the dynamics of modern economics that has to be identified as an important ethical challenge. The article discusses aspects of ethics, law, religion and economy in a multidisciplinary way. (shrink)

This paper argues that Cohen’s early work on Marxism, and his work in political philosophy, entails commitment to a distributive paradigm, that is, the view that exploitation obtains only if distributive injustice obtains. Cohen’s early espousal of that paradigm is explicitly reaffirmed in his defence of luck egalitarianism. The paper argues that Cohen’s distributive paradigm is neither the only defensible theory of exploitation, nor indeed the most plausible. It also shows that Cohen himself had doubts about the distributive (...) paradigm, and in fact came to reject it towards the end of his life. (shrink)

Commodity chain analysis (Bair and Ramsay, 2003 Multinational Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies) is used to explore where economic pressure (from consumers) or socio-political pressure (from governments and NGOs) can be applied to reduce worker exploitation. Six paths are illustrated with examples of successful and unsuccessful application of pressure. Three conclusions are reached :Economic pressure on companies and brand owners is more likely to lead to improved workplace conditions than socio-political pressure; Brand owners are more likely (...) to implement improved workplace conditions than retailers; and Retailers who are under extreme consumer price pressure will resist improving workplace conditions. (shrink)

Contemporary accounts of the concept of exploitation can be grouped into camps that tie the wrongness of taking advantage of another person to: (1) the unfair division of benefits resulting from an interaction; (2) excessive benefits resulting from structural injustice; and (3) a failure of respect for others’ humanity. In practice, accounts of exploitation that focus on the fairness of benefits resulting from individual transactions and, to a lesser degree, unjust social and economic institutions have dominated the (...) applied ethics literature using the concept of exploitation. However, fairness-based accounts of exploitation have a difficult time explaining a common dimension of purportedly exploitative cases in the press and academic literature—namely the absolute deprivation of and/or experience of injustice by victims of exploitation. In this paper, I argue that a respect-based account can explain how exploitation arises both from individual interactions and against a backdrop of injustice. Specifically, our connections with one another and social and economic institutions specify the duty of beneficence and political responsibility to promote just institutions. Exploitation takes place when people fail to act on these specified obligations in favor of their own benefit. (shrink)

It is the economic buzz-word of the 1990s, it destroys our jobs, it hollows out the decision-making power of governments, it even threatens the nation-state as the central institution of western type democracies — `it' is globalization and we are only at the beginning of it. Whether all of this is for good or ill is a topic of heated debate. One positive view is that globalization is an unmixed blessing, with the potential to boost productivity and living standards (...) everywhere.This is because a globally integrated economy can lead to a better division of labour between countries, allowing low-wage countries to specialize in labour-intensive tasks while high-wage countries use workers in more productive ways. It will allow firms to exploit bigger economies of scale. And with globalization, capital can be shifted to whatever country offers the most productive investment opportunities, not trapped at home financing projects with poor returns. In fact, the arguments in favour of globalization differ little from the arguments in favour of a free market in a closed economy.Critics of globalization take a gloomier view. They predict that increased competition from low-wage developing countries will destroy jobs and push down wages in today's rich economies. There will be a `race to the bottom' as countries reduce wage taxes, welfare benefits and environmental controls to make themselves more `competitive'. Pressure to compete will erode the ability of governments to set their own economic policies. The critics also worry about the increased power of financial markets to cause economic havoc, as in the European currency crises of 1992-93, Mexico in 1994-95 and South-East Asia in 1997-98. And “chaos theorists” have even predicted a clash of civilizations, as Western norms and values attempt to impose themselves on other societies through the medium of globalization.But despite all the buzz about globalization, or rather because of it, globalization has turned into a notoriously difficult concept to define. It is an inflated term that is employed so loosely that almost anything can be used to illustrate its operation. This limits the analytical usefulness of the concept. In what follows, we shall introduce a more precise definition and point out the political consequences of this type of globalization. (shrink)

Many critics have suggested that international paid surrogacy is exploitative. Taking such concerns as its starting point, this article asks: how defensible is the claim that international paid surrogacy is exploitative and what could be done to make it less exploitative? In the light of the answer to, how strong is the case for prohibiting it? Exploitation could in principle be dealt with by improving surrogates' pay and conditions. However, doing so may exacerbate problems with consent. Foremost amongst these (...) is the argument that surrogates from economically disadvantaged countries cannot validly consent because their background circumstances are coercive. Several versions of this argument are examined and I conclude that at least one has some merit. The article's overall conclusion is that while ethically there is something to be concerned about, paid surrogacy is in no worse a position than many other exploitative commercial transactions which take place against a backdrop of global inequality and constrained options, such as poorly-paid and dangerous construction work. Hence, there is little reason to single surrogacy out for special condemnation. On a policy level, the case for prohibiting international commercial surrogacy is weak, despite legitimate concerns about consent and background poverty. (shrink)

The paper provides an economic interpretation of legal culture. Drawing on analogies from other products and services markets, I argue that combinations of legal language, procedures and conceptual structures constitute a network which, mainly through cost considerations, come to occupy a dominant position in particular jurisdictions. The facts that a particular legal culture will be adopted by political rulers and that practising lawyers can both control entry to the profession and ‘capture’ law‐making processes suggest that legal culture networks may (...) be protected against competition. To the extent that they have monopolistic power, lawyers can exploit the key features of legal culture to extract rents: the law used can be more formalistic, more complex and more technical than is optimal. Whether the monopolistic power of a particular legal culture is sustainable depends on the relative strength of potential competitive forces. These can take the form of alternative cultures becoming available for particular branches of the law, thus partially dismantling the network, or through transfrontier transactions opening up the network to competition from foreign systems. (shrink)