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Exploitation and demeaning choices

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  • Jeremy Snyder

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Snyder, 2013. "Exploitation and demeaning choices," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 12(4), pages 345-360, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:12:y:2013:i:4:p:345-360
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X13496067
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Edna Ullmann-Margalit & Cass R. Sunstein, 2002. "Inequality and Indignation," Discussion Paper Series dp286, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    2. Snyder, Jeremy, 2010. "Exploitation and Sweatshop Labor: Perspectives and Issues," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 187-213, April.
    3. Zwolinski, Matt, 2007. "Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 689-727, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Adams, Krystyna & Snyder, Jeremy & Crooks, Valorie A. & Berry, Nicole S., 2017. "“Stay cool, sell stuff cheap, and smile”: Examining how reputational management of dental tourism reinforces structural oppression in Los Algodones, Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 157-164.
    2. Tae Wan Kim, 2018. "Gamification of Labor and the Charge of Exploitation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 27-39, September.

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