Almost all of us agree that sweatshops are exploitative. However, it is barely agreed upon what the exact nature of exploitation is and what the exploiters should do to make it right. In this essay, I will summarize and evaluate an account by Jeremy C. Snyder that aims to pinpoint the nature of “Needs Exploitation” and answer the question of what the responsibilities the exploiters have.
Snyder describes “Need Exploitation” as the action of an exploiter gaining advantage from an exploited while “disregarding shortfalls in the basic needs of the exploitee [1]which the exploiter has a duty to meet” (Snyder 390). With description together and a consideration of morally non-ideal conditions such as competitive market and demanding investors, Snyder claims: to not exploit, the employers have a duty to grant employees enough to meet basic needs if they reasonably possibly can (call this “reasonability”) within context of mutually beneficial transaction[2]. This is stronger than Moral libertarianism which cannot make sense of any super-contractual duties, and weaker than Arnold & Bowie’s Dignity approach because it only requires an action from the employer if it is reasonably possible. [3]
For Snyder, the first measure that determines reasonability is the kind and duration of the relationship between the employer and the employee. This can help to explain why Nike, for example, has more responsibility towards its own employee than to some other worker that does not work for Nike. Another measure is external constraints on employers in a morally non-ideal situation. For example, a competitive marketplace might mean that Nike is not able to fulfill its workers’ basic needs---adopting Snyder’s view, this would not count as exploitation if Nike has done what it can under the influence of the market.
I think Snyder’s claim, though expedient at first glance, is flawed in two ways. The first flaw is that it relies heavily on consequentialism for the support of a what he calls a “deontological” claim (Snyder, 402). The key difference between Snyder and Arnold & Bowie is that Snyder restricts employers’ duties by proposing the notion of doing what is “reasonably possible”, but the notion of “reasonably possible” in this case relies heavily on consequences. For example, “employers in the global marketplace may not be able to raise labor costs while remaining competitive” (Snyder, 398) is seen as one constraint over what an exploiter can possibly do, but this is appealing to the consequences of an action in order to justify them. One may say that this is the “can” required of the “ought”, but Snyder’s reasonability is not equivalent to “possibility”. Snyder’s reasonability still allows big companies to do what they see fit in a competitive market, even if they have the ability to change or influence the market. Nothing more is required other than a duty of beneficence. This example (Snyder, 398) is not merely contingent, because while the notion of reasonability and convenience can have meaning for a consequentialist calculation, it makes less sense with prima facie duties. Though I am not claiming that paying someone a living wage is a prima facie duty, I can certainly see why a Kantian may think that it is.
If the above analysis holds, Snyder has mixed in consequentialism to justify that it is acceptable for employers to pay what they can---why is it problematic? It is problematic, because we cannot just start applying consequentialism whenever it is convenient for us. We can say that the optimal consequence for B is “A wrongs B and compensates B $100” if we choose to apply consequentialism only after wronging happens but before the compensation, since that focuses our consequentialist lens on “A gives B $100”. Applying consequentialism in the case of sweatshops at least requires a justification that our current market and norm already yields the optimal consequence up until now. Otherwise to apply consequentialism at all would be to base the computation on an already erroneous result.
If Snyder’s usage of consequentialism in a supposedly deontological theory is not a defeating inconsistency, then I appeal to the second flaw---the inadequacy of consequentialism in answering any exploitation charges. I think we should abandon consequentialism all together when evaluating exploitation, because consequentialism is simply not discriminatory on exploitative and non-exploitative situations. The antidote example [4](Valdman, 3) illustrates this: whether A sells B the antidote for $20,000 or for $2, the net consequences would be positive. A mutually beneficial consensual transaction would always be morally permissibly under purely consequentialist considerations. An outcry against exploitation is a deontological outcry in nature. We refuse to accept whatever computational result that consequentialism gives us. Even if it is successfully justified and shown that an exploitative market really is consequentially optimal, we still would not say that we have solved the problem of exploitation and found our moral guideline. I think that is the reason why a theory that appeals to consequentialism cannot achieve much.
If these two flaws of Snyder’s claim hold, then there are two steps that Snyder could take to fix his claim. The first step is to abandon the “deontological” label altogether and commit to consequentialism completely after justifying the consequential optimality of the existing market norm. The second step is to justify the adequacy of using consequentialism in responding to exploitation charges, if the optimal solution really is exploitative.
To conclude, I have attempted to show that Snyder’s claim relies on consequentialism, but consequentialism is an inadequate approach for the discussion of exploitation. If what I have argued holds, then the bridge and middle ground between Moral Libertarianism and Overly Demanding Approaches is once again broken. Future research should be devoted to coming up with a practical implementation of the Overly Demanding Approaches, rather than taking its practical difficulties as an indication of the theory’s lack of moral strength.
Reference
Snyder, Jeremy C. “Needs Exploitation.” Ethic Theory Moral Practice 11 (May 9, 2008): 389–405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9115-9.
Valdman, Mikhail. “A Theory of Wrongful Exploitation.” Philosophers' Imprint 9, no. 6 (July 2009): 1–11.
[1] I think that Snyder was not careful enough with the language here, since if he was trying to define a specific form of exploitation, he should not be using words such as “exploiter” and “exploited” in the definition. I think it would be better to replace these with “employer” and “employee”, respectively. [2] Whenever I refer to the “claim”, this is the claim I am referring to. [3] The claim offered by Snyder of what duties employers have can be seen as a middle ground between Moral libertarianism and Overly demanding accounts of exploitation. Moral libertarianism claims that an interaction cannot be wrong if it is consensual. The view can be seen as flawed because it is too lax on the exploiter. Overly demanding accounts of exploitation includes Hypothetical Fair World Price Approach which calculate what the employee ought to be paid in a world without any unfairness, and Dignity Approach which claims that employers must pay a living wage[3]. These views are seen as overly demanding on the employer. [4] B is deadly poisoned and only A has the antidote. Common sense tells us that if A sells the antidote to B for $20,000, A would be wrongfully exploiting B.
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