Exploitation Benjamin Ferguson and Hillel

Broadly speaking, the term ‘exploitation’ can be applied to a number of different kinds of interaction. Mineral deposits, mistakes, workers, and wombs are all said to be exploited. One sense of exploitation, often applied to the extraction of resources, or capitalising on an opponent’s mistaken move in a board game, connotes mere use or advantage taking. Exploitation in this sense need not imply any form of distributive injustice, or indeed, any wrongdoing at all. However, when we claim that a group of workers is exploited we use a second sense of the word. Exploitation in this normative sense involves taking unfair advantage and is a form of distributive injustice. In what follows we shall focus solely on exploitation in the normative sense. When Alice steals Bob’s wallet, she takes it without his consent and makes him worse off than he was. Conversely, when Bob buys an apple from Alice’s fruit stand, the transaction is consensual and mutually beneficial. Transactions like the apple purchase, in which all parties better off and no parties worse off, are strictly Pareto improving transactions. Some accounts of exploitation include non-consensual and/or harmful transactions such as theft, while others limit their scope to consensual and strictly Pareto improving exchanges. At least regarding normative analysis, it matters little whether we extend the term beyond consensual and mutually advantageous cases, for it is easier to say what has gone wrong when consent is lacking and harm has been done. Explaining the injustice of transactions that are both Pareto improving and consensual, on the other hand, is more difficult. In fact, some philosophers and economists have claimed that the reason it is difficult to explain the injustice of such transactions is that they are simply not impermissible. They argue,