Okay, thanks for clarifying. I myself lean towards the free market side of this example, and don't necessarily agree with the idea that exploitation is taking advantage of another's lack of options.
Take the dictator's game. The flaw with your model is that it's not iterated. A more realistic dictator's game would be iterated (repeated). In which case over time a poor party can force the rich party to give it a higher share.
>Okay, thanks for clarifying. I myself lean towards the free market side of this example, and don't necessarily agree with the idea that exploitation is taking advantage of another's lack of options.
You think of exploitation as just something like slavery.
But slavery is too an example of taking advantage of another's lack of options.
In slavery it is: "You either do this or I kill you".
Which is not that different from "You either do this, or you and your family die of hunger / end up homeless".
You either have options -- so you get to pick and you're not exploited.
Or you don't have options, in which case, you either get a fair price for your work (compared to what value your employer gets out of it), or you are exploited.
Sharecropping, the post-slavery solution to keep poor blacks and whites in their place, was also exploitation, based on their lack of options.
Take the dictator's game. The flaw with your model is that it's not iterated. A more realistic dictator's game would be iterated (repeated). In which case over time a poor party can force the rich party to give it a higher share.