Exploitation is using a superior negotiating position to inflict great costs on someone else, at small cost to yourself.
Actually, it isn’t strictly too broad; it also excludes things that should be included. E.g. it doesn’t have to be a negotiation. I would say that something that tries to trap your attention in short, high-intensity, unfulfilling activity is exploitative. E.g. casinos, social media. Or, simple fraud would be exploitative.
A way it’s too broad is that it doesn’t mention the motive, or the benefit to the exploiter. (Well actually I’m not exactly sure what you meant by “at small cost to yourself”.) Some examples you gave are like “why didn’t the employer do this thing that would have been nice for the employee, that wouldn’t have cost too much”. But like, they might just suck, or they might rationally not view it as worthwhile.
Your example
A parent sits down for tea, but their kid is running around. “Absolutely no noise while I’m having tea, or no Nintendo for the next month.” Every time the parent pulls this card, the kid accepts.
I was very surprised after posting this then some commenters considered things like wage theft and outright fraud to be exploitation, whereas I consider such illegal behavior to be in a different category.
The exploiter extracts about as much value from the exploiter as they can while still retaining the relationship (employee, romantic, customer, con mark), regardless of harm (e.g. including by lying, or by making it harder for the exploited to leave the relationship).
A normal and/or healthy parent-child relationship doesn’t have the parent extracting as much value as possible from the child regardless of ethics or harm!
I see. So the maximalization is important to the definition. I think then, under this definition, using Villiam’s pie example from another thread, the person taking 90% of the pie would not be exploiting the other person if he knew they could survive with 9%.
I think this definition would also say that a McDonald’s employee who puts me into a hard upsell is exploiting me so long as they never physically handle my credit card and don’t have the capacity to trap me or otherwise do more than upselling. But if they handle my credit card and don’t steal the number, then they’re no longer an exploiter.
That is to say:
1. The maximization criteria is unstable 2. There needs to be some condition about the manner in which they extract value; otherwise, plenty of ordinary business transactions in which one side does its best would be considered “exploitation”
I don’t think McDonald’s example quite makes sense; if they were doing credit card fraud, that would probably destroy the relationship, so failing to do that fraud doesn’t absolve them of being an exploiter. But anyway, you’re probably right that “maximal” is too strong.
Actually, it isn’t strictly too broad; it also excludes things that should be included. E.g. it doesn’t have to be a negotiation. I would say that something that tries to trap your attention in short, high-intensity, unfulfilling activity is exploitative. E.g. casinos, social media. Or, simple fraud would be exploitative.
A way it’s too broad is that it doesn’t mention the motive, or the benefit to the exploiter. (Well actually I’m not exactly sure what you meant by “at small cost to yourself”.) Some examples you gave are like “why didn’t the employer do this thing that would have been nice for the employee, that wouldn’t have cost too much”. But like, they might just suck, or they might rationally not view it as worthwhile.
Your example
doesn’t seem to me like exploitation.
We have different intuitons about this term then.
I was very surprised after posting this then some commenters considered things like wage theft and outright fraud to be exploitation, whereas I consider such illegal behavior to be in a different category.
I think the simple throughline is something like:
An interesting proposal that I’ll have to think about. I’m still uneasy with throwing lying in with uses of power.
Also, this one clearly does include the parenting example I gave, and is strictly broader than my proposed definition.
A normal and/or healthy parent-child relationship doesn’t have the parent extracting as much value as possible from the child regardless of ethics or harm!
Therefore not.
I see. So the maximalization is important to the definition. I think then, under this definition, using Villiam’s pie example from another thread, the person taking 90% of the pie would not be exploiting the other person if he knew they could survive with 9%.
I think this definition would also say that a McDonald’s employee who puts me into a hard upsell is exploiting me so long as they never physically handle my credit card and don’t have the capacity to trap me or otherwise do more than upselling. But if they handle my credit card and don’t steal the number, then they’re no longer an exploiter.
That is to say:
1. The maximization criteria is unstable
2. There needs to be some condition about the manner in which they extract value; otherwise, plenty of ordinary business transactions in which one side does its best would be considered “exploitation”
I don’t think McDonald’s example quite makes sense; if they were doing credit card fraud, that would probably destroy the relationship, so failing to do that fraud doesn’t absolve them of being an exploiter. But anyway, you’re probably right that “maximal” is too strong.