lecture 9.2 markets are terrible

Question 1

exploitation the origins

Answer 1

Karl marx as main critic of capitalism as an economic system

Argument extends to the free markets

Fous on freedom and efficiency largely ignores the role power has within companies (employee vs employer and between market agents (multinationals vs small businesses vs consumers)

Marx stresses the importance of hierachical relations and differences in negotiating power, which are ultimately determined by acess to capital

Because capitalists have access to capital, they succeed in appropriating profits

in contrast laboreres (workers) lack access to capital and are therefore forced to rent out their labor

Labor contracts may be mutually advantageous but the advantages are distribued extremely unequally

Question 2

Exploitation today: wolfs definition of the problem

Answer 2

Making some sort of wrongful or unfair use of another person purely for your own benefit. This is normally only possible if that person is vulnerable in some way

An exploiter is someone who uses anothers weakness for their own ends … to use another person for your own ends … is to act without sufficient regard for how the other person may be affected. it is this lack of regard that makes you an exploiter

Question 3

exploitation today (2)

Answer 3

The exploited ca and often do consent to exploitation

Markx analysis: if you lack alternatives and negotiation power, your only option is to agree to being exploited

If the exploited have no real alternatives (but to consent to being exploited) there is no real freedom

Related to sandels fairness objection and satz vulnerability of participants to noxious markets

Wollff: not just limits to what should be traded but as a problem with free markets

Question 4

wolf differs from marx with respect to who exploits whom

Answer 4

while marx focuses on the capitalist exploiting the worker, wolf stresses that its us the western consumers who exploit poor workers who produce the things we buy

The exploiter if there is one is you or me; the consumer Why? because we … benefit from the process of economic competition and are quite happy to acquiesce in a system where people potentially do a great deal of harm to each other for our benefit

every economioc competition (which is crucial to how markets function) risks leading to exploitation and is “potentially exploitative)

Potential exploitation turns into actual exploitation “ only if we do not pay sufficient attention to the interests of those who may be harmed in the procaess of creating cheaper or better goods for us

Question 5

how to show this concern for the losers of competition

Answer 5

by supporting countries having labor laws, minimum wage legislation, social security systems, financial safety nets etc.

Think of the competitive advantage of producing in countries where wages are minimal, health and safety legislation and social security virtually non-existent. Thus we benefit without providing a safety net. We as consumers could decide only to purchase goods from countries with good social legislation, evenif this puts prices up. But most of us dont and typically we act with little or no regard to any harms that may be suffered by those engaging in production overseas for our benefit… In importing goods we are exporting exploitation.