The Philosopher's Arms Exploitation
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Aug 16, 2013 
Jana Bakunina, a former investment banker who reflects on long hours as 'self-inflicted exploitation.' Alex Voorhoeve, a philosopher who maps exploitation to Marx, Locke and libertarian views. They probe bargaining power, desperation versus commodification, whether wealthy people can be exploited, and a live experiment about pay fairness. Short, sharp philosophical debate with real-world banking stories.
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Paradox Of Voluntary Exploitation
- Exploitation can be a voluntary but unfair contract where one party gains disproportionately more than the other.
- Alex Voorhoeve frames the paradox: refusing the contract avoids wrongdoing but often leaves the weaker party worse off, as with sweatshops.
Bargaining Power, Not Labor Value, Explains Exploitation
- Marx explained exploitation as capitalists extracting surplus value because labor's bargaining power is depressed by unemployment.
- Alex rejects the labour theory of value but accepts Marx's point about unfair bargaining positions producing exploitation.
Initial Resource Inequality Creates Exploitation
- Left libertarian views trace exploitation to unjust starting distributions of resources that leave workers in weak bargaining positions.
- Hillel Steiner-style left libertarianism suggests unequal initial shares (including bodily talents) justify corrective redistribution.