I was prompting GPT-4 a bit to come up with examples of stories of exploitation and how they work, and some of the ideas it came up with made me think:
What typically happens to the resources gained in typical cases of exploitation?
Like you give two examples in your post. But I don’t want to address the India example, partly because there’s a hypothetical element to it (e.g. tuberculosis treatment is free in India), and partly because it may be unusual. (If the examples you give are unusual, perhaps the issue is not the concept of/aversion to exploitation, but rather that we are missing some other rule that makes an exception for the case you mention.)
What about more typical examples? Like the archetypal example of exploitation is sweatshop labor. But what happens to the money that the laborers earn? Are property rights strong enough that they get to keep it? The sweatshop presumably earns a profit, which presumably gives it some sort of power; what does it use this power for? If the sweatshop causes some sort of problem, who pays? What kind of work would the workers have if the sweatshops weren’t available, and how do the long-term consequences of that work differ from the long-term consequences of sweatshops?
I guess I can consider the sex for rent example. It seems to me that the (sex <-> home) exchange can already go through with standard prostitution where the prostitute sells sex to other men than her landlord. So it doesn’t seem like you would be doing much to better satisfy anyone’s preferences, except maybe by eliminating transaction costs? On the other hand, while it wouldn’t open up many new trades, it seems like having a prostitute directly sell to her landlord would change the power relations, since it would make her more dependent on this specific landlord’s goodwill.
(Actually, what happens if e.g. the prostitute can no longer provide sex for the landlord? E.g. if the landlord changes the kind of sex he wants to be something that the prostitute doesn’t provide? Or if the prostitute stops working for the landlord as a prostitute? Or if the landlord gets married and his wife doesn’t accept him having a prostitute? Or various other changes? Probably for some of these, the landlord may be somewhat screwed. But legally, would there be any where the prostitute could get evicted? Would she be entitled to some sort of benefits from the government as a result of that?)
I was prompting GPT-4 a bit to come up with examples of stories of exploitation and how they work, and some of the ideas it came up with made me think:
What typically happens to the resources gained in typical cases of exploitation?
Like you give two examples in your post. But I don’t want to address the India example, partly because there’s a hypothetical element to it (e.g. tuberculosis treatment is free in India), and partly because it may be unusual. (If the examples you give are unusual, perhaps the issue is not the concept of/aversion to exploitation, but rather that we are missing some other rule that makes an exception for the case you mention.)
What about more typical examples? Like the archetypal example of exploitation is sweatshop labor. But what happens to the money that the laborers earn? Are property rights strong enough that they get to keep it? The sweatshop presumably earns a profit, which presumably gives it some sort of power; what does it use this power for? If the sweatshop causes some sort of problem, who pays? What kind of work would the workers have if the sweatshops weren’t available, and how do the long-term consequences of that work differ from the long-term consequences of sweatshops?
I guess I can consider the sex for rent example. It seems to me that the (sex <-> home) exchange can already go through with standard prostitution where the prostitute sells sex to other men than her landlord. So it doesn’t seem like you would be doing much to better satisfy anyone’s preferences, except maybe by eliminating transaction costs? On the other hand, while it wouldn’t open up many new trades, it seems like having a prostitute directly sell to her landlord would change the power relations, since it would make her more dependent on this specific landlord’s goodwill.
(Actually, what happens if e.g. the prostitute can no longer provide sex for the landlord? E.g. if the landlord changes the kind of sex he wants to be something that the prostitute doesn’t provide? Or if the prostitute stops working for the landlord as a prostitute? Or if the landlord gets married and his wife doesn’t accept him having a prostitute? Or various other changes? Probably for some of these, the landlord may be somewhat screwed. But legally, would there be any where the prostitute could get evicted? Would she be entitled to some sort of benefits from the government as a result of that?)