Moderate Structural Exploitation

ABSTRACT We consider the apparent inability of theories of exploitation to capture common intuitions about structural exploitation. For example, it seems that consumers participate in the exploitation of sweatshop workers, but there is no direct transaction between the parties. This poses a problem for transactional accounts of exploitation. Many address this problem by appealing to structural exploitation. Existing structural accounts fall, primarily, into two families: weak structural exploitation and strong structural exploitation. We argue neither appropriately captures intuitions about sweatshops. Weak accounts can capture aggregate inequalities but fail to consider relationships or discrete connections. Strong accounts, on the other hand, are sensitive to relationships between exploiters and exploitees, but too demanding about what it takes to exploit to capture consumers' role in sweatshops. We propose a third option, ‘moderate structural exploitation’, that fits ‘between’ existing approaches. Moderate structural exploitation focuses on relationships between the exploited and their exploiter (unlike weak accounts), without appealing to overly strong conditions for who counts as an exploiter (like strong accounts do). We then show that our moderate structural account can not only accommodate intuitions about sweatshops, but also helps assess the exploitation of teachers in the US public education system.