Exploitation

This paper offers a non‑ideal account of exploitation centred on collapse‑risk. Instead of defining exploitation in terms of surplus extraction or unfair benefit alone, I argue that contemporary capitalist institutions exploit agents by concentrating on them a standing risk of agency‑collapse as a mechanism of control. Exploitation is defined as a relation in which access to the material and social conditions of continued agency is conditional on participation in a specific role, exit from that role carries much higher costs for (...) one party than for the other, and the costs of refusal include a non‑negligible probability of crossing the agency‑collapse threshold, where deliberative, executive, and temporal capacities cease to function as conditions of justificatory address. On this view, the central injustice is not only that some gain more than they should, but that the basic structure distributes the danger of normative unavailability onto those whose compliant labour sustains it. The framework explains how formally voluntary arrangements – employment, welfare conditionality, migration regimes, gig‑work – can be exploitative even when they satisfy standard criteria of consent, options, and non‑domination. It also suggests a limit on legitimate power: institutions that rely on the standing possibility of agency‑collapse as a tool of regulation are beyond justification, regardless of aggregate benefits. (shrink)

This thesis is organized into two parts. In the first, I focus on concepts, ones which include a series of critiques on past human behaviors and mindsets. I trace how rationalist ideologies and worldviews developed into conformist schematics, and how these schematics have been implemented via central state authority. I also examine the results of this process, focusing on dehumanization, silencing, and objectification. Informed by Scott, I describe legibility construction. In the process of making people and places legible to central (...) authorities, large swaths of detail become obfuscated or lost. Oftentimes this leads into attempts to reconstruct the territory in the image of the rationalized map. This conformist vision pays no attention to the locality, tradition, or context of the people and places being bulldozed in the process. I also draw from and analyze speculative fiction, a medium which allows the imagining of potential futures. Fiction can help inform the future and articulate failures of the past and present. -/- In the second part, I outline my own working conception of how to move toward a more equitable and sustainable future. Rather than providing a prescriptive blueprint of how I think the world ought to operate, I instead outline general goals that I believe are worth moving towards, along with potential strategies for getting there. (shrink)

The letter analyzes the country-specific structural stigma in the modern media development of People’s Republic of China. It raises the issues on unconventional cybersecurity risks in mental & psychological health with a lens of justice in gender & marriage, and critical discourses in the media environment with the Chinese revisionist nationalism. It studied media coercion in relation to the breaches of humanitarian law in the constitutionalism context of PRC, and adopted a critical theory approach to religion with the background of (...) the militarization of religion by the Chinese “United Front”. With the non-identity problem in the totalitarian regime, structural stigma is analyzed with coercion theory and religion in queer gender. Ménage à trois is justified by case specificity in human development and global economy. (shrink)

The intuition that some mutually beneficial transactions can be impermissibly exploitative is very powerful. However, it is also notoriously difficult to make sense of. Intuitively, the wrongness of an exploitative offer seems to be that it is a less-than-best in terms of how much it furthers the exploited party’s interests. But how can this be wrong if there is no duty to make the best offer in the first place? Various attempts have recently been made to solve this problem by (...) arguing that the wrongness of exploitation is indeed to be explained by a duty to offer the best option. The present paper argues that no positive duty, however, can be discharged through the terms of a mutually beneficial transaction, which renders such duty-based explanations inadequate. The paper then explains what implications this has for what corporations owe the global poor. (shrink)

The paradox of exploitation emerges from the contradiction between the reasonable view that some consensual, mutually beneficial transactions can nonetheless impermissible and the non-worseness claim, which holds that no mutually beneficial transaction can be worse than its absence. This paper dissolves the tension by attacking the intuition on which the reasonable view rests. I argue that this intuition is best explained as an adaptive response to the collective action problems of hunter-gatherer economies, where ill-defined property rights made egalitarian sharing norms (...) essential for cooperative survival. Emerging for reasons independent of its capacity to track moral truth, the intuition carries no evidential weight in economic ethics. I further vindicate non-worseness by showing it lacks any plausible adaptive explanation. Debunking the fairness intuition removes the sole basis for the Reasonable view and dissolves the exploitation problem, while providing a novel application of local evolutionary debunking arguments to economic ethics. (shrink)

If it is better to be exploited rather than neglected, how can it be impermissible to exploit if it is permissible to neglect? This puzzle has been identified by Benjamin Ferguson in the pages of this journal as the ‘paradox of exploitation’. The present paper takes stock of the various solutions that have been proposed since then and argues that they either misidentify the nature of the paradox or run into implausible implications. By contrast, it will make the case for (...) the following unpleasant solution: The permissibility of neglect makes exploitation permissible as well; and if exploitation is impermissible, then so was neglect. By implication, no impermissible exploitation can follow permissible neglect. The solution is unpleasant, nevertheless, it is all-things-considered more plausible and crucially more parsimonious than existing alternatives. (shrink)

Protection rackets are used by criminal organizations to secure power, wherein “protection” is offered to individuals for threats coming from the criminal organization itself. In this paper, I put forth the concept of a moral racket as a type of structural racket wherein social dominants exploit moral reputation to perpetuate systems of domination. A moral racket occurs when individuals forcefully position themselves as moral saints for moral issues that either do not exist, or do, but were created by the wrongful (...) actions of these individuals themselves. Considering three real-world cases of moral rackets of white saviorism within non-profits, elite philanthropy, and anti-LGBTQ legislation, I show how they are particularly pernicious instruments of oppression. Moral rackets do this by performing several key ideological functions, including creating a perception of legitimacy of systems of domination, undermining moral knowledge, thwarting attention from true sources of social problems, and blocking off avenues of resistance. (shrink)

This paper presents a robust stage-based system for equitable resource allocation, using water as a proxy for all essential resources and Bitcoin (B1) as Earth’s primary currency. The system ensures fairness by resetting Bitcoin’s value to 1 water unit post-hack, progressively eliminating malicious actors via an infinite Bitcoin trap (B2), and updating block hashes with new timestamps to counter blockchain hacks without re-mining. A key principle is that the Bitcoin genesis block hash, created by Satoshi Nakamoto (000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f), is the only (...) constant hash across all Bitcoin-based systems, holding intrinsic value greater than all hackers’ wealth combined. This hash anchors trust, immutability, and fairness, ensuring Satoshi symbolically retains 1 BTC as the system’s cornerstone. Simulations confirm the system supports non-malicious individuals, eliminates hackers, and upholds the genesis hash’s primacy, aligning with economic principles (Smith, 1776; Keynes, 1936) and systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1956). (shrink)

Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where transactors’ consent to a transaction is morally valid, it is (...) also morally transformative and overrides distributive unfairness’s pro tanto wrong. Thus, wrongful exploitation requires morally invalid consent. (shrink)

We experimentally elicit views of what exploitation is from over 2,000 subjects. Our experimental design does not test existing theories of exploitation. Rather, it focuses on more fundamental properties that are the building blocks for these theories. We find, first, that exploitation is not a vacuous concept: Not all economic interactions are deemed exploitative. Second, contrary to several of the major approaches in the literature, both inequalities in the distribution of economic gains and asymmetric power relations contribute to exploitative relations. (...) What matters most is the interaction of power and inequality: The effect of both elements together is significantly greater than the sum of each on their own. Finally, and perhaps remarkably, we found no major differences in exploitation ascriptions between experts and lay subjects. These findings have implications for the ethics of employment contracts, particularly in the context of sweatshop labor. (shrink)

This article argues that the relations of social and political power that obtain between humans and pets are illegitimate. We begin by showing that pets, a largely neglected population in political philosophy, are subject to socially and politically organised power, which stands in need of justification. We then argue that pets have three moral complaints against the relations of power to which they are subject. First, our power over pets disrespects their moral independence: the fact that they are not simply (...) available to be used to serve the interests or projects of others. Second, our power over pets systematically sets back their interests in exercising control over their own body, actions, and environment. Third, in subjecting pets to asymmetric relations of power in which they are heavily dependent on humans for the satisfaction of their interests, we subject them to objectionable risks of harm. Together, these complaints support our thesis that the power relations central to the institution of pet keeping are illegitimate. The practical upshot is that we have a strong moral reason to abolish this institution. (shrink)

True crime is an incredibly popular genre of entertainment that crosses many forms of media including books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts. Is there something morally wrong with true crime stories or the enjoyment of them, given their focus on the pain and suffering of real people? In this article, I consider a range of concerns that implicate both the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of the true crime genre, and outline parameters for both the ethical creation and consumption of true (...) crime. (shrink)

That some mutually beneficial exchanges could be impermissibly exploitative is generally thought to be incompatible with welfarism – a perspective emphasising the moral value of satisfied preferences. The present article argues that both perspectives can be reconciled by turning Kaldor-Hicks inefficiency into a necessary condition for exploitation. The ensuing account provides a parsimonious answer to the so-called exploitation problem, at the cost of accurate intuition tracking.

In this chapter I consider a common refrain among critics of digital platforms: big tech "exploits" us. It gives voice to a shared sense that technology firms are somehow mistreating people—taking advantage of us, extracting from us—in a way that other data-driven harms, such as surveillance and algorithmic bias, fail to capture. Exploring several targets of this charge—gig work, algorithmic pricing, and surveillance advertising—I ask: What does exploitation entail, exactly, and how do platforms perpetrate it? Is exploitation in the platform (...) economy a new kind of exploitation, or are these old problems dressed up as new ones? What would a theory of digital exploitation add to our understanding of the platform age? First, I define exploitation and argue that critics are justified in describing many platform practices as wrongfully exploitative. Next, I focus on platforms themselves—both as businesses and technologies—in order to understand what is and isn’t new about the kinds of exploitation we are witnessing. In some cases, digital platforms perpetuate familiar forms of exploitation by extending the ability of exploiters to reach and control exploitees. In other cases, they enable new exploitative arrangements by creating or exposing vulnerabilities that powerful actors couldn't previously leverage. On the whole, I argue, the language of exploitation helps express forms of injustice overlooked or only partially captured by dominant concerns about, e.g., surveillance, discrimination, and related platform abuses, and it provides valuable conceptual and normative resources for challenging efforts by platforms to obscure or legitimate them. (shrink)

Informing others about the world is often a helpful act. In this paper, I study agents who conduct experiments to gather information about the world, committing in advance to fully disclose the nature of the experiment together with all experimental findings. While this appears to be a benign activity, I characterize a type of exploitative informing that is possible even within this restricted setup. I show how exploitative informants use public experiments to predictably manipulate interlocutors’ beliefs and actions to their (...) own advantage. I discuss epistemic and practical grounds on which it may be permissible for agents to resist acts of exploitative informing, then conclude by discussing implications for epistemic injustice and duties to gather evidence. (shrink)

Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is a valuable resource for republican theorists. She brings both a feminist’s and a slave’s perspective, thereby challenging some of the masculine and elitist assumptions that formed part of republican theoretical history. One theme that Jacobs displaces is that of the transition from slavery to freedom. She rejects the idea that the mental quality of freedom comes through an act of physical individual heroism in confronting and prevailing over one’s (...) oppressor. Instead, Jacobs emphasizes the role played by family ties, particularly to one’s children, in making the decision to flee slavery, and of support networks and mutual aid once executing one’s plan. Jacobs also articulates the ubiquitous prospect of sexual abuse faced by girls and women in slavery. By its very nature, this is not the kind of threat that can be confronted through a decisive physical showdown. The author illustrates these points, and the distinctive nature of Jacobs’s republican model, by contrasting her narrative with the famous story of Frederick Douglass’s fight with the slavebreaker Covey. (shrink)

This article introduces video game ethics as an emergent field. It then focuses on some of the pressing issues distinctive of video game design, issues which arise predominantly from the making rather than the playing of games. Many issues in video game ethics arise from an asymmetry in the relationship between designer and player. To play a game is to place oneself in a position of dependence on the designer. The designer shapes the player's experience. They structure the physical environment (...) and how the player perceives and moves through it. They invite players to inhabit new roles and care about new goals and outcomes. Players thereby voluntarily enter into situations organized by such design choices. This dependence is part of what makes games so compelling, even valuable, especially when they are used to challenge, confront, or invite reflection, but it can also create vulnerabilities that can be exploited. This article examines three such vulnerabilities generated by game design: exploitative monetization practices rooted in economic and structural features of gameplay, gambling‐like reward systems such as loot boxes and the legal and moral concerns they raise, and socially manipulative design patterns that capitalize on player attachment and loyalty. (shrink)

This paper argues that antagonism is not merely a historical or institutional phenomenon but an ontological feature of human relational existence. Human beings are constitutively dependent on one another for survival, recognition, language, and social participation. This dependence generates asymmetries of power, and asymmetry creates the structural possibility of instrumentalization and domination. Antagonism therefore arises not only from conflict or hostility but from the structural condition that human beings both need one another and can exploit that need. Against teleological theories (...) that interpret antagonism as historically contingent and ultimately resolvable, the paper argues that antagonism is historically transformable but ontologically persistent. Modern institutional and technological systems intensify antagonism through the diffusion and anonymization of responsibility, a phenomenon that can be described as ethical withdrawal (Enser 2026). Because antagonism cannot be eliminated, the ethical task cannot consist in designing a conflict-free society but in restraining domination through accountability. Ethical life therefore does not consist in eliminating antagonism but in remaining responsible within ongoing structural tension. The central ethical task is not reconciliation but accountability within antagonism. (shrink)

This dissertation contains the following sections: Introduction, Chapter 1. Libertarianism and Its Foundations, § 1. Libertarianism as a Theory of Basic Rights, § 2. Self-Ownership and Property Rights, § 3. The Right of Original Appropriation, Chapter 2: Conceptual Diversity in Libertarianism, § 1. Moral Foundations of Libertarian Rights, § 2. The State, Taxation, and Redistribution, Chapter 3. Right-Libertarianism, § 1. The Problem of Original Appropriation, § 2. The Nozick’s Proviso, Chapter 4. Centrist Libertarianism, § 1. Sufficientarian Provisos, § 2. The (...) Utilitarian Proviso, Chapter 5. Left-Libertarianism, § 1. Egalitarian Provisos, § 2. The Reciprocity Principle, Chapter 6. Other Justifications for Basic Income, § 1. The Catastrophe Clause, § 2. The Rectification Principle, Conclusion, References. (shrink)

Workplace democracy promises equal workplace relationships, democratic decision-making, and managerial accountability. But the sociological literature on organizational degeneration in worker cooperatives shows that these promises are hard to realize in practice because of the problem of elite capture. My first main point in this paper is that this is a significant problem for democratic workplaces more generally that we should take into account when thinking about institutions for workplace democracy. I then proceed to my second main point and propose a (...) right to strike in democratic firms as one possible solution to this problem. I justify this right to strike on democratic grounds as a proportional means of resistance against threats against basic democratic rights and defend it against the objection that it goes contrary to the solidaristic ethos of democratic corporations. (shrink)

Streszczenie: Od samego początku istnienia ludzkości szeroko pojęta praca stanowi kluczowy element naszego życia i to w niej od zawsze znajdował, znajduje i będzie znajdować się potencjał wyzwoleńczy. W związku z tym praca zawsze była obiektem zainteresowań i analiz ze strony filozofów i innych naukowców. Niniejsza praca bada etykę pracy Antonia Negriego, skupiając się na jego dziełach i innych wybranych tekstach filozoficzno-społecznych oraz dziełach kultury. Na początku dokonano historyczno-ideowego wprowadzenia do postaci i filozofii Negriego oraz filozofii innych myślicieli, aby następnie (...) przejść do interpretacji Kartezjańskiego (burżuazyjnego/kapitalistycznego) projektu według Negriego. W trzeciej kolejności omówiono Negriego interpretację materialnej tradycji filozofii, której najwybitniejszymi przedstawicielami są Machiavelli, Spinoza i Marks, będących razem w fundamentalnej opozycji do transcendentnej i transcendentalnej tradycji filozofii uosabianej przez Hobbesa, Rousseau i Hegla. Następnie omówiono istotę etyki pracy Negriego, czyli podmioty pracy w postaci robotnika pierwotnego, robotnika wykwalifikowanego, robotnika masowego i robotnika społecznego. Analiza wykazała, że etyka pracy Negriego pełni fundamentalną rolę w jednostkowym i kolektywnym wyzwoleniu oraz wolności, która to wolność jest i będzie w pełni realizowana w obecnej i przyszłej absolutnej demokracji, rozumianej jako rządy wszystkich przez wszystkich. -/- Abstract: From the beginning of humanity, work has been a crucial element of our life, and in work there always was, is, and will be, capacity for liberation. As a result, work has always been an object of great interest and analysis from philosophers and other scientists. This thesis examines work ethics of Antonio Negri, focusing on his works, other selected socio-philosophical writings, and cultural works. The thesis begins with historical and ideological introduction into life and philosophy of Negri, and philosophy of other thinkers, and interpretation of Cartesian (bourgeois/capitalist) project according to Negri. Thirdly, Negri’s interpretation of materialist philosophical tradition, of which most prominent representatives are Machiavelli, Spinoza, Marx, who are together in fundamental opposition to transcendent and transcendental philosophical tradition, represented by Hobbes, Rousseau and Hegel, is discussed. Furthermore, the essence of work ethics of Negri, that is figures of work represented by primary worker, professional worker, mass worker, and socialized worker, is discussed. The results of the investigation show that work ethics of Negri plays a crucial role in individual and collective liberation, and in freedom, which is and will be, fully realized in contemporary and future absolute democracy, understood as rule of everyone by everyone. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in the use of artificial intelligence for companionship. Most resistance to this proposal appeals to the risk of deception: the idea that, because they lack the relevant mental states, artificial companions cannot authentically befriend their users. In this paper, I argue that it would be morally impermissible to befriend artificial companions even if there was no deception involved in doing so. This is because, without deception, such befriending would become exploitative: it would require users to take (...) unjust advantage of certain vulnerabilities required for authentic friendship. I make the premises of this argument explicit and defend each in turn, both positively and from various objections. The resulting view is one on which—barring some interesting alternatives raised by those objections—non-deceptive artificial companionship is analogous to knowing participation in an arranged marriage. (shrink)

Most people who engage in work are hired by an employer and paid a salary or an hourly wage. It is widely believed that, in virtue of being paid objectionably low wages and/or subjected to other poor conditions in their employment, many of these workers are wrongfully exploited. Exploitation is standardly understood to involve taking advantage of a vulnerability in order to obtain benefits. Wrongful exploitation of workers, then, involves wrongfully taking advantage of their vulnerability in order to benefit from (...) their labor. The central question that accounts of the wrong of exploitation must answer, therefore, is what makes it the case that any particular instance of advantage being taken of workers’ vulnerability in order to benefit from their labor is wrongful. In this chapter, the author describes and discusses the most prominent answers to this question that have been defended in recent philosophical literature. (shrink)

Today, housing remains a paradigmatic site of debate about broad socio-political matters: individual autonomy and responsibility, state perfectibility, democratic health, leisure, and familial reproduction. This essay revisits Friedrich Engels’s canonical pamphlet 'The Housing Question' (1872) to interrogate the enduring association between home ownership, place attachment, and conservation—or conservatism. I demonstrate that strong and productive connections exist between the Housing Question debate, contemporary politics, and contemporary housing discourse. Engels’s rebuke of Proudhonist housing-related commendations continues to hold significance in discourses on what (...) housing is, and what it should and should not be. Drawing on his pamphlet, I conceptualize the figures of the Engelsian “unfettered jailbird” and the Proudhonist homeowner as respectively embodying revolutionary mobility and idle rootedness. Idle rootedness is conceived as freedom in the Proudhonist approach. This directly contrasts with the Engelsian approach which casts home ownership as unfreedom.! These two opposed approaches are also two perspectives on the impacts of being housed. In Engels’s account, housing participates in encouraging or preventing man’s idleness and unfreedom. Proprietorship and place attachment, in this latter sense, are conceptualized as practically antithetical to emancipatory futures. (shrink)

In Eros and Alienation, Alan Sears provides a historically grounded account of sexuality under capitalism, showing how erotic life is shaped by the subordination of our practical activity to the growth imperatives of capital. By bringing Marxism to bear on theories of sexuality, Sears shows how sexual liberation is inextricably linked to the struggle against capitalist production. Sears traces how the resulting alienation conditions the erotic, ultimately demystifying common sense assumptions about sexuality. He exposes how predominant sexualities are mediated by (...) market relations and sustained through state hegemony, social organization and normativities that are conducive to the reproduction of the necessary conditions for capital. Alongside advancing theories of sexuality – particularly through a Marxist lens – Sears also offers a distinct contribution to social reproduction theory (SRT). He develops the theoretical resources necessary for pushing SRT beyond the (hetero)normative frame that it typically assumes in its analysis.... (see more). (shrink)

In Maskivker’s recent “Justice and Contribution,” she argues that, under normal circumstances, the failure to guarantee that life-sustaining workers are above the non-struggle point is not merely disrespectful and a failure of beneficence, but a violation of the norms of fair play and, as such, a “low blow.” In this article, I offer a critical reply to Maskivker. I begin by explaining her reasoning. Then I turn to critique, focusing on two key weaknesses and, in so doing, drawing out two (...) larger lessons. -/- Dans son récent article « Justice and Contribution », Julia Maskivker soutient que, dans des circonstances normales, le fait de ne pas garantir que les travailleurs essentiels à la vie reçoivent une compensation suffisante pour ne pas avoir à lutter pour leur subsistance (« non-struggle point ») constitue non seulement un manque de respect et un manque de bienfaisance, mais aussi une violation des normes du franc jeu et, par conséquent, un « coup bas ». Dans cet article, j’offre une réponse critique à Maskivker. Je commence par expliquer son raisonnement. Puis, je passe à la critique, en me concentrant sur deux faiblesses clés et, ce faisant, en tirant deux leçons plus importantes. (shrink)

James Stacey Taylor’s book – Markets with Limits: How the Commodification of Academia Derails Debate (New York: Routledge, 2022) – is excellent. He explores the errors that have derailed the discussion of the limits of markets, attempts to rerail the discussion through a clarifying taxonomy, and explains why the derailment occurred. He also argues that academic research should be governed by academic rather than market norms. The first part of his project succeeds. It is less clear whether the second and (...) third parts succeed. (shrink)

The foundation of the Kantian theory of right is the one innate right to freedom. Here, I offer a comprehensive philosophical comparison between Kantian rightful freedom and the conception of freedom as negative liberty or non-interference, a hugely influential view in terms of which Kantian rightful freedom is often understood. This fruitful comparison clarifies the fundamental differences between the two views, emphasizing the resources the Kantian approach offers for contributing to contemporary debates on freedom as a distinctive rights-based republican view. (...) This Kantian perspective also offers a useful lens for critiquing negative-liberty-based views, revealing a dilemma they face. (shrink)

Some contemporary philosophers, such as Gary Chartier, Matt Zwolinski, and Miranda Fleischer, propose that a basic income should be seen as an instrument for rectifying historical injustices. This article examines the arguments for this proposal based on Robert Nozick’s historical theory of justice. The first part of the article formulates the normative basis of Nozick’s theory, as well as his three principles of distributive justice: the principle of original appropriation, the principle of voluntary transfer, and the principle of rectification. Nozick (...) himself believed that, in modern societies, the principle of rectification may require the redistributive policies envisaged by John Rawls’s difference principle. The second section examines reasons why historical justice theorists should prefer basic income, including the arguments by Milton Friedman, Matt Zwolinski, and Philippe Van Parijs. The third section responds to several objections to rectification redistribution proposed by Loren Lomasky and Jan Narveson. In order to counteract these objections, Hillel Steiner’s liberal theory of exploitation is proposed, which serves as an additional argument in favor of the fact that rectification can be organized through a basic income. (shrink)

This contribution lays out five criteria for a successful argument proving that employers impermissibly exploit their workers when they pay them an unfairly low wage. Michael Kates has recently provided two metrics of fairness which satisfy the first two. The contribution argues that while Kates has significantly advanced the discussion, the final three criteria have yet to be satisfied. The contribution then identifies several difficulties posed by such an endeavour, and questions whether it is worth the trouble. It may indeed (...) be unnecessary to prove that workers are exploited by their employers to justify higher wages. (shrink)

This essay undertakes an archaeological examination of Homo Normalis—the imagined “normal” human produced by the modern sciences of order. Beginning with Quetelet’s l’homme moyen and Galton’s moralisation of deviation, it follows how statistical averages hardened into ethical imperatives and administrative norms. Psychology, sociology, and critical theory each perpetuate this logic of legibility, translating life into measurable compliance. The study traces the migration of normality from virtue to infrastructure, revealing how biopower governs not through repression but through optimisation and care. In (...) the contemporary palliative society, even emotion is quantified and neurodiversity commodified. Against this regime of legibility, the essay proposes an ethics of variance: a refusal to restore wholeness or coherence, and a commitment instead to lucidity—the disciplined awareness of the apparatus that renders life governable. The Myth of Homo Normalis forms part of the ongoing Anti-Enlightenment project alongside Against Agency and The Discipline of Dis-Integration. (shrink)

In cases where structural oppression conditions the broader public sphere, the democratic ideal of a receptive public may be threatened by at least two possible outcomes which appear to undermine its stated goal of increasing understanding of counterhegemonic ideas amongst mainstream, oppressive groups. Either (a) counterhegemonic ideas are defanged to make them sufficiently palatable to a new audience, or (b) counterhegemonic ideas are taken up intact, and as a result the extant networks of publics which depend on oppressive structures and (...) hierarchies will be destroyed. As we will argue, in certain cases of colonialism such as the Straits Philosophical Society in colonial Singapore, the conditions which receptive publics are supposed to ameliorate: (i) the social costs of speech, (ii) inequality of epistemic labour, and (iii) the antagonism between groups, are not only an irreducible feature of counterhegemonic efforts, but are in fact increased in the attempt to maintain receptive publics. However, this may be more a feature than a bug: receptive publics need not be seen only as communicative intermediaries for oppressed groups, but as a possible dialectical step towards new modes of socio-material life. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the content of some of the labour-related human rights articulated in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the obligations ascribed to various actors regarding those rights in the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), in particular those ascribed to corporations. Recognizing the inconsistency, I claim, can help us see some of (...) the moral limitations of both familiar public responses to exploitative labour practices and influential philosophical accounts of the wrong of exploitation. In light of these limitations, I argue that there are reasons to accept a more expansive account of the human rights-related obligations of corporations than that found in the UNGPs, and in particular that we should accept that corporations have obligations to actively contribute to lifting people out of poverty. (shrink)

This chapter argues that in some cases of wrongful exploitation, individuals who are not parties to the relevant transactions are as seriously and as directly wronged as the exploited parties to those transactions. Section I presents two cases that provide intuitive support for this claim, and offers an initial explanation for it that relies on considerations that are similar to those that motivate the Nonworseness Claim. Section 2 describes some central components of an account of the wrong-making features of wrongful (...) exploitation that is suggested by the argument in section 1, and suggests some reasons to find this type of account plausible. Section 3 notes what the arguments in sections 1 and 2 seem to imply with regard to the remedial duties of wrongful exploiters, contrasts this view with one that has recently been defended by Malmqvist and Szigeti, and argues that there are important reasons to prefer the former. (shrink)

Jules Salomone-Sehr argues that an activity is cooperative if and only if, roughly, it consists of several participants’ actions that are (i) coordinated for a common purpose (ii) in ways that do not undermine any participant’s agency. He argues that guidance by shared intention is neither necessary nor sufficient for cooperation. Thereby, he claims to “topple an orthodoxy of shared agency theory." In response, we argue that Salomone-Sehr’s account captures another notion of cooperation than the sociopsychological notion shared agency theory (...) has focused on. Furthermore, we argue that Salomone-Sehr’s interpretation of (ii) is too demanding; it implausibly makes cooperation incompatible with exploitation. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the 4B movement, which originates in Korea, as a feminist movement. In particular, I conceptualize it as a labor strike, considered against the backdrop of recent empirical research on comparative rates of unpaid labor, happiness, and well-being between men and women in heterosexual relationships. In doing so, I situate it within a historical context of the successes and failures of second-wave and recent "Girl Boss" feminist movements, particularly as regards their intersections with capitalism.

Exploitation: Perspectives from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics brings together recent work on the topic of exploitation from philosophy, political science, and economics in one volume, organized around three main questions: What is exploitation? Why is exploitation wrong? What should we do about it? These questions are increasingly relevant in public policy discussions. The past decade has witnessed the rise of populism and an increasing sense that politics is a game rigged to benefit certain classes of persons at the expense of (...) others. Interestingly, this sense of unfairness has been shared across the political spectrum though, of course, the left and right differ in both their moral diagnosis and their political prescription. Current debates over minimum wage laws, immigration reform, and undue corporate influence on politics can all be understood as drawing on and developing these concerns over exploitative political treatment. At the same time, the literature on exploitation has blossomed. What was once a topic of relatively narrow interest to philosophers working in the tradition of analytical Marxism has been reinvigorated and diversified. The essays in this book both represent and extend that diversity. While the condition of labor remains an important and central topic, the current volume extends the analysis to such neglected topics as the relationship between children and parents, interactions between states, and interactions between generations. (shrink)

This book brings together recent work on the topic of exploitation from philosophy, political science, and economics in one volume, organised around three main questions: what is exploitation?, why is exploitation wrong?, and what should we do about it? These questions are increasingly relevant in public policy discussions. The past decade has witnessed the rise of populism and an increasing sense that politics is a game rigged to benefit certain classes of persons at the expense of others. Interestingly, this sense (...) of unfairness has been shared across the political spectrum though, of course, the left and right differ in both their moral diagnosis and their political prescription. Current debates over minimum wage laws, immigration reform, and undue corporate influence on politics can all be understood as drawing on and developing these concerns over exploitative political treatment. This book also draws upon the natural opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement that the topic of exploitation presents. Questions about exploitation often involve not only philosophical issues, but economic and political ones as well. The contributors to this volume add to that breadth of knowledge. With the re-emergence of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) as a burgeoning field of academic inquiry, now is the perfect time to explore issues of exploitation in an interdisciplinary, public-policy focused context. This books is essential reading for anyone interested in exploitation theory, and in PPE more generally. (shrink)