I’m probably going to write up my own thoughts about this soon, but I’m curious to see what people think (and also if anyone’s familiar with any literature on the question, because I wasn’t able to find any):
From a utilitarian standpoint, are we ever justified in calling a a voluntary economic interaction “exploitative” if no party is acting to make alternatives to the interaction worse, and there’s no asymmetric access to information that would change one party’s mind about whether the interaction is to their benefit? If so, what are the justifications?
(Someone’s going to say “well, that depends how you choose to define ‘exploitative’” so to be clear: In common usage, calling such an interaction exploitative seems to be basically synonymous with considering it as a wrong done by one party of the interaction against another, and this is the sense I mean. More technical definitions of exploitation exist, but as far as I can tell these are usually used by people who believe that their economic definition coincides with the moral one.)
Let’s say you’re wandering the desert, lost and dying of dehydration. While wandering, you find my oasis. I say “You can drink from my oasis if you give me everything you have, not just what’s on you but your life’s savings.“ Is that exploitative?
I certainly think so, yes. But it’s not completely obvious how to ground that intuition in utilitarian ethics. I think it’s possible to do so –I think there are several different ways in which it is beneficial to have a concept of exploitation which includes scenarios like that one– but I’m still working out how to express what those benefits are, and I was curious to hear what other people thought they were.
I’m driving someone into poverty in this example, I am a little better off, you are a lot worse off. Seems pretty straightforwardly utilitarian.
Kind of. In some sense the purpose of Utilitarianism is to judge outcomes rather than attach moral judgment to specific classes of actions. Once you get away from that, it’s less of a Utilitarianism, and more… something else. But the search for the One True Moral Theory continues regardless, so it’s worth investigating.
Most exploitative relationships are a kind of Utility Vampirism, or else a small difference in the rate of exploitation makes a huge difference in produced utility. In fact, under Utilitarianism, property itself is only contingent.