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Recycling: I believe in exploitation. Now what is it?

Wesley J. Smith has a new post up in which he dissents from a Wall Street Journal article urging that kidneys should be bought and sold, both from live donors and from cadavers. (Selling someone else's kidney after he is dead? The mind boggles.) The authors are apparently pretty blase about the probability that the poor would sell their organs (or, I suppose, the organs of their dead loved ones) to the rich.

This all brings back a piece I did here at W4 over five years ago which is probably worth bringing back out and dusting off. In it I used the example of a rich man's buying a kidney from a live donor who is very poor as a sort of paradigm case of exploitation. I then asked whether it is possible to get some sort of clue as to the intrinsic nature of exploitation from this example, and I gave a thought experiment that involved trying to induce a (possibly reluctant) poor man to engage in a risky rescue by offering him a lot of money.

The comments thread was interesting. Responses ranged from those, on the one hand, who thought it might not actually be wrong to buy and sell organs to those, on the other hand, who were rather peeved about the fact that I was not willing to carry my conclusion to the point of a full-scale "just wage" theory for all paid labor. Here is the original piece, sans a couple of links to stories about Westerners buying organs from donors in the Third World.

Being a person with some sympathies for some aspects of libertarianism in economics, I have always been prone to resist the application of the word 'exploitation'. For years I probably would have said that I didn't believe there was such a thing as exploitation as some separate natural kind of wrong, that whenever there was a real wrong done that got labeled in that way, it could be analyzed into some other category--trying to induce someone to do something wrong, for example, exercising coercion, or engaging in fraud. And I am still unlikely to agree with a lot of people who use the word frequently, especially about wages. I'm probably going to say that some of the things they want to label with that word are not even wrong, much less instances of exploitation.

But I now do believe that there is such a thing as exploitation.

I'm a great believer in the use of the paradigm case in ethics, and I think a paradigm case of exploitation is that of Westerners who are now traveling to third-world countries to buy kidneys. Even if we grant that there are instances where a live kidney donation can be perfectly morally legitimate, buying a kidney is a different matter altogether, and there are excellent reasons why it is illegal in the U.S. Moreover, it makes it worse (and this is why it's an instance of exploitation) that the kidneys are being purchased from poor people who wouldn't give up a kidney at all if they didn't really need the money.

But I'm still not at all sure what exploitation is. The nub of my puzzlement is this question: Can we give any further overarching account of why some things--especially services or actions--should not be for sale? In the case of sex, we're on very solid ground in terms of the function, and for Christians, the God-ordained intent of sex in uniting one man and one woman. But one can hardly say that kidney donation has a created function. The activity is entirely man-invented, and no one had ever heard of such a thing two hundred years ago.

So here's a thought experiment to get us going in trying to decide what it is about certain things--specific heroic acts, perhaps?--that makes it the case that they must be done out of love, charity, or good-will rather than being sold: Suppose that a small child falls into a narrow well or hole of some sort and can't be gotten out in any ordinary way. The rescuers are becoming desperate when they hear of a midget in the neighborhood who is so small that he has a chance of being able to get down into the well to rescue the child. Let's say that the odds of his not only succeeding but getting back alive and without permanent major injury are neither very good nor very bad. Let's say it's 60 to 40 odds that all will be well. But that's still a pretty big risk for him to take. From here the scenario diverges into two sub-scenarios. In A, the rescuers and parents simply go to the man's house, put the situation before him, and ask him if he would be willing to help. In B, the rescuers and parents, learning that he is extremely poor and has eight children, offer him a huge sum of money, to be given even for the attempt, that will go either to him if he survives or to his family if he dies.

What's wrong with B? Clearly, there's nothing wrong with A. That must mean that it isn't wrong in itself for the man to help, or it would be wrong to ask him to help. In fact, it would be heroic for him to help. But B seems, to me at least, like an attempt at exploitation. The idea seems to be that his poverty is being used to pressure him to take a large risk out of a desire to help his family when he would not take that risk simply out of concern for the trapped child. But why is that wrong?

Comments (45)

Selling kidneys is wrong, but I don't think it's necessarily exploitation. Seems to me that real exploitation, like in your midget example, involves taking advantage of differences in power, including differences in knowledge or in available options. If a poor person sells his kidney to a rich person in order to buy food, he's being exploited. If a middle class person sells his kidney to a rich person so he can pay for a weekend getaway, he's not being exploited.

I think we feel that exploitation is wrong because we feel that the situation allowing exploitation is unjust. Because of the power difference, it feels like coercion.

We all believe that it would be unjust to force a slave to risk his life to save the child. We can justify that belief intellectually. We all agree that it would be OK to approach a free man, one not in a desperate situation, and try to persuade him to risk his life. Your example is somewhere in between the two, and that's why it feels wrong. The Marxists are right, there's no sharp line between consent and coercion.

I think the stupidest thing libertarians say - and there's some strong competition here - is that a consensual transaction benefits both parties. Wrong on every level. I don't know how many times I've seen this written, by libertarians who are smart enough to know better. There's lots of exploitation going around, in the most banal interactions.

B is wrong because it tempts him beyond what is normal to take a (possibly) self-destructive risk. A libertarian might say that there is no problem if the transaction is between consenting parties (they always say that), but the midget's consent will be distorted since he is not weighing simply the risk to his own life against the unquestioned value of saving the child, but the value of his own life against a sum of money.

There is already an enormous, unspoken moral pressure brought to bear on the midget simply in the asking. The community is saying, "You're our last hope of saving this kid. It's very risky - you could well die in the attempt - but will you do it?" He must be calculating his future stature in the eyes of others should he say no. His wife might be trying to drag him back into the house, yelling, "Don't you dare do it! We love you and need you." But then suddenly a sum of money is offered that is well beyond what the midget can supply his family for several years. Will this change not only the midget's estimation of his value, but his wife's as well? The love of money is the root, etc.

It seems to me money could be offered only post-rescue attempt, whether successful or not, and should not be spoken of before then.

As to Aaron's "If a middle class person sells his kidney to a rich person so he can pay for a weekend getaway, he's not being exploited" - yes he is. He's exploiting himself. Many libertarians would say that's fine. I don't.

On second thought, the reason we feel exploitation is wrong is not because we feel the situation is unjust. There's nothing unjust about a motorist stranded in the desert, but it would be exploitative to sell him a gallon of gas for a thousand dollars. There's just a basic feeling that it's wrong to take advantage of someone who's powerless. I think that feeling is correct, but I can't justify it rationally.

The Marxists are right, there's no sharp line between consent and coercion.

The world is full of grey. So what? Many also have argued that it's exploitive of the poor to tie military service to getting government-paid college education. Many poor Americans wouldn't agree that the "power differential" amounts to a hill of beans because they see it as an honest offer targeted at those with modest to no means. Likewise, it takes no imagination to imagine a scenario in which a kidney could be sold honestly. Are you really going to tell an Indian father or mother in a disease-ridden shanty town that you know better than they to let them sell a kidney for $1M USD and deliver their family into upper-middle class life from life-destroying poverty?

Are you really going to tell an Indian father or mother in a disease-ridden shanty town that you know better than they to let them sell a kidney for $1M USD and deliver their family into upper-middle class life from life-destroying poverty?

Yep. You can't make it either non-wrong or non-exploitative just by scaling up the amount of money.

By the way, Mike, that general kind of thing is a reality already. Women in India rent their wombs to homosexual Westerners as surrogates, and impoverished Indians do sell their kidneys. The situation would not be less repugnant if the amounts paid were only "large enough."


But I think Aaron Gross may be right that "exploitative" is not the only relevant category. A middle-class person who sells his kidney for a weekend getaway is definitely doing something _wrong_, as is the purchaser, but I'm not sure whether the term "exploitation" applies.

I'd add to your remarks, Lydia, that it is seldom the case that a person living in an Indian shanty town needs only get a massive infusion of fast cash into his bank account to gain stable, lasting entry into the upper middle class. And yes, it's wickedly exploitative to try convincing him otherwise.

Mike T, I agree with you. The problem boils entirely down to the absence of a regulated, legal market. Once that is in place, there is no moral issue with selling one's organs at the best available price, just as one sells one's labour. The problem with your scenario is that without a regulated legal market (which is what exists today in the grey trade in organs), there is no possibility that the donor will get any significant percentage of the $1 million.

One analogy for this market is the petroleum industry in the Middle East where the various principalities became immensely wealthy as result of cartelisation in the form of OPEC, where they were able to control the price of an extractable resource. In your example, if the poor Indian families could set up some kind of a co-operative and ensure that the donors actually get most of the money spent by the recipient it could be a win-win for everyone.

the midget's consent will be distorted since he is not weighing simply the risk to his own life against the unquestioned value of saving the child, but the value of his own life against a sum of money.

I think that's a very shrewd point, Bill.

In the other thread discussion five years ago, I asked whether there was a difference between paying the midget and paying someone for a regular, but dangerous job. There seems to be a difference, and I tried to analyze it. E.g. A steel-worker or a fireman. My tentative guess as to the difference is that in the latter case there is not the same focus on a specific "daredevil" act, so there is not the same idea that we're twisting the person's arm using money to get him to commodify the value of his own life. There is instead the development of a set of general skills that minimize the risk to the person.

William's point about weighing one's life against money is not what makes Lydia's example exploitation, though. At least, not as the word is generally used, including by me and Lydia. I think William's definition is idiosyncratic. Heroism-for-money isn't exploitation. If a billionaire offered a million dollars to a well-off but not rich person to risk his life, that would not be exploitation.

I don't think you can get around the fact that exploitation is about taking advantage of someone's weakness. In fact, I think that's the answer to Lydia's question, "What is it?" (Though "taking advantage" might just be question-begging.) I mean weakness broadly defined to include lack of information, lack of money, low intelligence, being in a bad circumstance, etc. In other words, you can only exploit someone who's weak in some way.

Perhaps the reason that a person is able to be pressured to weigh his life against money is because he is in a weak position. I would imagine that the well-off person is not really doing it for the money. Maybe he's doing it for the thrill or (if it's to help someone) out of generosity, and the money is just an extra thrown in.

So what is the limiting principle on this paternalism?

What's wrong with B? Clearly, there's nothing wrong with A. That must mean that it isn't wrong in itself for the man to help, or it would be wrong to ask him to help. In fact, it would be heroic for him to help. But B seems, to me at least, like an attempt at exploitation. The idea seems to be that his poverty is being used to pressure him to take a large risk out of a desire to help his family when he would not take that risk simply out of concern for the trapped child. But why is that wrong?

I think you overlooking the fact that you are placing a burden on him either way. If he is a decent man, you will pull at his conscience such that he may take a risk without compensation that would leave his family worse off in scenario A than in B. Simply broaching the subject itself may be enough to make him feel obligated to do it for any number of reasons (reputation, decency, inability to just say no, fear of ostracism). This isn't a case of "greater love hath no man..." but rather a bunch of neighbors putting the question to the man in such a way that he may take a risk he doesn't want to for social reasons.

I have the same intuition about "taking advantage," but I'd feel in a stronger position if I knew at some deeper level what constitutes taking advantage and what distinguishes taking advantage from making a perfectly legitimate advantageous offer.

I often consider here the plot of the book Lassie, Come Home. I think it is right at the edge of the two concepts. The coal mines in Yorkshire are not doing well for some reason, and the boy's miner father is in dire financial straits. The Duke wants the beloved dog. The boy is so attached to the dog, and the dog so attached to the boy, that the father has always refused offers to buy the dog. But at last, constrained by finances, he sells the dog to the Duke. Eventually, after it turns out that the dog is prepared to run away and endure any hardship to return to the old home, the Duke has a change of heart and gives up his property rights in the dog. The idea is that the Duke didn't really understand how deeply attached the dog and the family were to each other when he bought her.

Now, suppose he had understood all of that and continued to offer large amounts of money anyway, knowing the family's financial struggles. Would it have been a) wrong and b) exploitative?

I don't know what the right answer is, but I think I can see a couple of wrong answers lurking.

One wrong answer is in setting off "exploitative" and "not-exploitative" as if they were wholly distinct and separated by a bright line. But this rests on another possible error:

That acts from love are wholly apart from acts done for economic reasons. Pope Benedict, I think, made this point in Caritas in Veritate. We need to think of economic acts, acts of buying and selling and such, as being both exchanges in justice (and therefore with a view to some kind of equality), and also acts of love for the other party. Each interaction you enter into should be one where you are thinking "I am going to benefit, and so are they, and how good it is that it should be so". This attitude precludes the sorts of exchanges where you intentionally hide features about what you are selling so the buyer doesn't know the bad things about it, and should also preclude other sorts of exchanges where you take advantage of special knowledge (say, insider trading) that you have that an ordinary buyer couldn't reasonably have. It goes without saying, then, that love for the other party precludes trying to "do him in" in all other senses as well. But all the ordinary transactions we do all day long are within the ballpark, and can be done with love. Buy an item from the five-and-dime? Sure, that can be loving: did you ever return excess change when the clerk made a mistake? That's because you didn't want to gyp the store owner. Did you say thank you to the butcher who found you the pork roast? That's because you were treating him like a human being, not like a robot whose services you procured. The fact that a person CAN go through all the day doing these acts not out of love doesn't mean they are intended to be without love nor that they are somehow geared away from love inherently.

This, I think, helps address what I would take as a standard sort of off the cuff definition of an exploitative exchange, namely one that "he wouldn't enter into if he weren't constrained to it". The problem is that most people throughout most of history wouldn't enter into hard work if they weren't constrained by hunger and other needs. Even today, nobody be a trash man, or to work at a sewer plant, if they weren't paid for it, and they wouldn't take those jobs if they were not being constrained by needs for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc. I don't think that off the cuff notion works. And I think that part of the reason is that while people need not act lovingly in buying such services, there is nothing that precludes a man from loving his neighbor in the act of purchasing such services. The service itself is not something evil such that I cannot wish my neighbor had such a job and still love my neighbor. So, when I was working as a busboy "because I needed to", my employer was not exploiting me nor were the customers exploiting the both of us. And these ordinary services, procured in ordinary economic exchanges were free acts which could be acts of love alongside acts of exchange.

It seems to me money could be offered only post-rescue attempt, whether successful or not, and should not be spoken of before then.

I would qualify what Bill suggests here. If the parents said "we'll give you 3 day's wages no matter what, pay any medical bills if you are hurt, AND take care of your family until you are well (or permanently if you die)", that offer of money isn't a crude sort of imposition of economic pincers. Quite the opposite: if he were inclined to refuse primarily because of his duties to take care of his family, taking that particular factor off the table by an offer of money should it be necessary is freeing him from one particular constraint.

Life-risking jobs are not exploitative in themselves. Until the advent of antibiotics, most jobs had some notable risks, and as far as I have ever heard there is simply no way to set off a category dangerous-but-not-too-dangerous as an a-priori classification that makes sense. Coal mining and steel working are dangerous. Pouring cement can be dangerous - guys died in pouring the Boulder Dam. In my opinion jumping out of planes (even with a parachute, that is) is dangerous enough to make it morally dubious as a form of recreation, but for soldiers and rescue searchers it is not in the least morally dubious. If parachuting has gotten safer, then substitute wingsuit flying. So if the kind of job is something pointed in the direction of a good enough to justify the risks involved, doing it for the kind of money that makes it economically reasonable seems morally acceptable also. If people would expect firemen to save the kid (were they able to) and base that expectation on a job for pay (and the fireman's learning and experience that accompany the job), then I am not seeing a reason to reject paying the midget accordingly.

What seems to be exploitative, then, seems to be the EXCESS between what we would normally expect to pay the fireman in a normal (non-crisis) transaction, and the amount we are willing to pay the midget in the middle of this crisis to get him to be willing to risk his life when normally he wouldn't.

And that lands us right in the middle of an old, shop-worn debate: selling bottled water in the middle of a disaster for $20 per bottle. Like many, I think that price-gouging is not morally justifiable, but why? Whatever the reason, I think it applies to the midget case as well.

Now, suppose he had understood all of that and continued to offer large amounts of money anyway, knowing the family's financial struggles. Would it have been a) wrong and b) exploitative?

It would have been wrong and exploitative, but it would also not be comparable to the scenario with the midget. The problem with the midget scenario is that either way, you are exploiting the midget. You are calling upon him in scenario A to take a risk for no personal gain that may leave his family in ruin and without even an assurance that the community will be there for his family should something happen. Now it is true that the midget could easily do it out of genuine decency and love for his neighbor, but it doesn't change the fact that a burden is being placed upon him in either variation of the scenario. As described, scenario B is at least advantageous in the fact that the midget can make the decision both out of decency and gain for his family. In fact, the compensation might take away his last doubts about doing what he feels is the right thing because he can assure himself that doing the right thing will be a win-win for both the kid and his family.

Part of the problem I have with your scenario is that it's easy to see how someone like a midget could easily say "well, these people have never been good to me and if I refuse them they'll ostracize my poor kids even more." It's easy to see the midget feeling coerced to do "the right thing" in scenario A and also easy to see variations of scenario B where his mind is cleared of all fear and doubt about what is being asked of him.

And that lands us right in the middle of an old, shop-worn debate: selling bottled water in the middle of a disaster for $20 per bottle. Like many, I think that price-gouging is not morally justifiable, but why? Whatever the reason, I think it applies to the midget case as well.

So the father is rich and promises, in the company of witnesses, to compensate the midget and/or his family several million dollars to risk his life to save the kid and that's not ok?

Mike, do I understand correctly based on your comments that you think the case where a rich man is trying to buy a dog from a poor man is more clearly wrong than the case where a rich man is trying to use money to get a poor man to risk his life at no better than 60/40 odds that he will survive?

What I said is that they are not comparable at all. Meaning your dog scenario provides virtually no expository value to the midget's situation. It's like a woman comparing a daring trip to a grocery store before a snow storm to a suicide mission in the hills of Afghanistan or the Bataan Death March. Sure, both involve exploitation (and in the latter case, some risk of death) but the two actual subjects of the comparison have virtually nothing in common otherwise.

Exploitation is when party B attempts to take advantage of and profit from some weakness in party A's position. So in the midget example, B is exploitative because it is attempting to take advantage of the midget's poverty to compel him to do something. A isn't, it's simply a request. B would not be exploitative if it were just a general reward offered, rather than tailored to manipulate that particular midget.

In the case of the midget, the people are trying to convince him to do something heroic that they are unable to do, and that he has an obligation to do as a member of their community, while offering to mitigate the risks to his family. While in the dog case the Duke is tempting the family to disloyalty and removing from the poor family a form of support (whether the dog helped them in some way or just emotionally) for his own pleasure. Also, if he was their Duke he would be duty bound to see to their well being without asking for the dog. While in the case of the kidney selling you are tempting a person to mutilate himself for something unheroic and that he has no personal duty to do, just because he is excessively poor and/or stupid. Also making organ selling legal would create an even greater scarcity for poorer sorts who needed kidneys since everyone would be trying to sell rather than donate.

A isn't, it's simply a request.

As I pointed out, that's not a given. Peer pressure can be more powerful than the economic pressure we're calling exploitation here. A lot is simply assumed for the sake of argument here. One of which is that the community won't immediately forget the midget's family when he dies saving the child. Wouldn't exactly be the first time that a community went chicken$%^& on someone who did the right thing. In the absence of credible assurance or an understood relationship between the midget and the requestors that the midget's family will be cared for in his absence, that's one heck of a request to make upon someone in a weak position. If the midget were wealthy, it would be no big deal. But asking a widow and 8 kids to be destitute without any credible support assurance (implied or explicitly stated) from the community is one heck of a request.

Exploitation is when party B attempts to take advantage of and profit from some weakness in party A's position.

To me it feels like this is throwing around the term "exploitation" rather freely, and I think without sufficient clarity. What if the midget's friends brought the news of the problem to him before the parents did, and he was considering / hemming and hawing about whether to offer to try the rescue (for free), and he had just made up his mind to do it, when along comes Dad and says "I'll give you $3 million to do this rescue", is the midget's accepting the money exploitation of a family's very tough situation? How can one and the same monetary transaction be exploitation OF the midget in one case and BY him in the other case?

What if the midget says "Heck, no, I won't take a penny over $1 million for it"? (Whether he says out loud, or only in his mind, the comment "I have principles, you know" is left as an exercise for the student. Quiz tomorrow.)

Even in the version Lydia sets out, there is no definitive reason to think that Dad is attempting to "take advantage of some weakness" in the midget's position, in the sense that is clearly exploiting poverty as such. If Dad would have offered the same amount to a middle-class midget whose has excellent life insurance, where do we get any "taking advantage of" that is special to the poor midget? Maybe the middle class midget won't take the offer, but it's the same offer. An open offer from Dad to "any midget willing to take on the rescue" is open ended, not directed to a specific (and, potentially, a very poor) midget. Surely given the scenario we are permitted to imagine Dad saying "Oh, a midget? Well gee, get him over here, offer him enough to take care of his family. Oh, he's poor? Well then by golly offer him MORE than enough to take care of his family, by his lights."

In the earlier thread, I responded to one commentator who couldn't see anything wrong with the midget scenario _at all_ by asking what his intuitions would be if the midget were reluctant and something like a pressuring or bargaining session set in. The parents look around, see his situation, and start offering more and more money to overcome his reluctance. Would _that_ be wrong and/or exploitative? Would it become so at some point?

Because exploitation masquerades as a fair, consensual transaction, the concept of exploitation implies a notion of fairness (a just wage, etc.) and a notion of consent. An exploitative transaction is masquerading as something else that we're comparing it to. I think this masquerading is a necessary property of exploitation. Libertarians, of course, deny any masquerade: if the transaction is formally consensual, they say, then it's not exploitation.

To answer Tony's question: No, if the exact same offer were made to a well-off person it would not be exploitation (unless, for instance, the well-off person were known to be greedy, in which case the offer might be exploiting his greed). I think that what I'm saying matches the common usage of the word. It's crucial that the midget in this example is in a weak situation.

Aaron, there is a greater element of coercion in asking the midget to save the child out of civic duty and personal virtue than to offer to pay him for the task. Structuring it as an economic transaction puts him in a position of service provider whereas pulling upon his civic duty and honor carries without it a host of potential negative consequences should he refuse. It's only been a few decades where it's illegal to deny someone employment, ability to buy goods and other common public activities because you just don't like them. For the bulk of history, Scenario A could carry profound consequences for the midget's family should he decline; one of which is becoming a pariah and having to leave the community destitute.

Aaron, there is a greater element of coercion in asking the midget to save the child out of civic duty and personal virtue than to offer to pay him for the task.

Mike, by your own account, as I understand it, the economic inducement is _added_ to any worry about shunning. Why assume that if an economic inducement is offered the worry about shunning has gone away? It would seem that if you are introducing this strong worry about shunning into the situation it would obtain in both cases, so that the economic inducement is on top. In that case, there are all kinds of added issues: Now, the midget is being made to feel that he has a duty not just to the community but *also* to his own family to take the risk. Compare your own rhetoric concerning a poor Indian selling his kidney. Oh, the good you could do for your poor, poor family! Since duty to one's family and love for one's family, and a sense that one should be willing to sacrifice for them, are a huge part of non-sociopathic human nature, this is really twisting the guy's arm. And of course it comes along with the general notion that he could do good for the trapped child and hence for the community. If the concern is about what the neighbors will think in the first scenario, one can easily imagine people saying in the second scenario, "He wouldn't even do it when a big sum of money was offered to take care of his worries about his family. Of course he _should_ have done it for free, but he was such a coward [so selfish, whatever] that he wouldn't even do it for money. What a low-life!"

To answer Tony's question: No, if the exact same offer were made to a well-off person it would not be exploitation (unless, for instance, the well-off person were known to be greedy, in which case the offer might be exploiting his greed). I think that what I'm saying matches the common usage of the word. It's crucial that the midget in this example is in a weak situation.

Aaron, I am sensitive to the problem, but I think you have failed to identify additional necessary criteria. Otherwise ALL economic transactions between a rich and a poor person (or even, a "poorer person" even if in middle class) will fall into exploitation. Being "in a weak situation" doesn't preclude the poor person from freely (and I mean that in the proper sense, where he really is free, not just legally free) choosing transactions that are reasonable and just even though they don't provide EVERYTHING that he needs. If a poor person would sell his one household luxury, a high-end easy chair, for $1000 to a barely middle class person and call it a fair exchange, then selling it to a rich person at the same price cannot be an example of exploitation by the rich just because the $1000 doesn't meet all his needs, or just because the rich person could theoretically give him more out of charity. That there is a weakness in the poor person's negotiating position doesn't mean the weakness was actually used manipulatively in every transaction.

Back to the midget: (x) What if the offer were made before Dad found out the midget was poor? (y) Or, what if he made the the exact same offer to the poor midget that he would have made to a rich midget? In case (x), the poverty could not enter into Dad's considerations, and so could not have been a fulcrum around which he would have built some kind of undue influence / persuasion / manipulation. I would suggest that unless that factor - the notion of using some feature of the situation to craft undue influence - is present, you have a harder time establishing that the offer is exploitation. In case (y), if Dad's motives for the offer did not regard the poverty of the midget, because he would have made the same offer to any midget, then the poverty again could not constitute a fulcrum for manipulation in Dad's planning. And, therefore, the offer appears to escape being manipulative.

In the earlier thread, I responded to one commentator who couldn't see anything wrong with the midget scenario _at all_ by asking what his intuitions would be if the midget were reluctant and something like a pressuring or bargaining session set in. The parents look around, see his situation, and start offering more and more money to overcome his reluctance. Would _that_ be wrong and/or exploitative? Would it become so at some point?

Excellent question, Lydia. I think that we would, and perhaps we should feel somewhat dismayed at the prospect of the midget initially saying no, and Dad bargaining with higher and higher offers until the midget says maybe, and then ups the offer again to sway the little guy into a "yes". (As an interesting side-light consideration, would a person in a different society, one where the art of bargaining, give and take, negotiating were used in every economic transaction, have the same response of squeamishness to such a prospect, and is there a basis for thinking that our feeling of dismay or his lack of dismay is more appropriate? We generally only bargain on cars and used goods, and we neither are very good at it nor very comfortable with it.)

I suggest that we expand the scope of Lydia's question, though, to include midgets who are not exactly poor but have some extremely strong inclination of some sort. Suppose the midget is absolutely bonkers over Ming Dynasty art, and the parents have a Ming vase, and after a haggling session of 20 minutes they throw in the vase as part of the offer, is that exploitative? They are using his need/want for something to overcome his otherwise (reasonable?) reluctance to take on an onerous and or dangerous task, a task in itself moral and worth doing. Of course, the circumstances are different: need for necessities is different from want of luxuries.

The problem with that is that there are so many, many, infinitely many degrees of need that become more and more remote from the immediate moment (the need for a medicine that is currently under testing but not yet approved, or the need of a medical education for a student aching to become a doctor, for example - he cannot possibly be a doctor without that education) that one would never be able to discern a sure difference between needs that naturally are the subject of exploitation versus needs that are not. If the main burden of the midget's poverty is that although he has scraped by year after year (not well, but managed) but he will never send his son to medical school, is the offer "I'll pay for medical school" by Dad exploitative?

My sense is that we have not yet brought forth some essential facet, some critical distinction. I don't think that we can easily say that paying for dangerous services is, by itself, wrong - underwater welders get hazard pay quite reasonably, as do explosives experts and miners and test pilots and...(more below). I don't think that the mere fact that the midget is in a weak economic position makes the offer of money exploitative, but maybe it does with additional factors. I do think that the fact that the midget could offer to try the rescue for free, out of love of neighbor (or community spirit, if you prefer), and in some highly qualified sense maybe SHOULD try the rescue (regardless of whether the parents can afford any offer) clouds the issue.

If you have an oil well fire, and you send in ordinary firemen, they will be under EXTRAordinary dangers - their training doesn't extend to these conditions. But if you send in Red Adair and his company, you have to pay a lot more for their services because there are inherent costs and extra risks, but it is neither immoral to ask Red's people to put out the fire nor is it immoral for Red to expect plenty more in pay than regular firemen. But how does someone like Red Adair get started putting out oil well fires? Somewhere along the way he or his predecessors had to try things that they didn't already have complete training and experience for, and it is surely possible that the circumstances made it morally and economically reasonable to make those attempts. That is to say, when dangerous conditions present themselves, the mere fact of increased danger does not kick the situation into "thou shalt stay away on pain of immorality." The combination of goods to be served by engaging the danger (that is, the inherent goods that are achieved if you succeed, not the pay you may get for attempting) and the levels of goods risked in trying may limit who can morally make dangerous attempts, sure, but that is an ordinary calculus of daily life anyway.

So, application to the midget: maybe this guy has done a number of physically challenging and risky sorts of activities in the past, things that most ordinary people would think twice about. Maybe he spent some years as a stunt man, and more years as a spelunker explorer, and so on. Maybe he was thinking about the possibility of starting a new business of doing difficult, risky, midget-sized jobs, but he didn't have the capital to get started because he is poor. So he views Dad's offer as a heaven-sent opportunity: he gets his name plastered in the media with a great rescue, great publicity, and the capital to start his business right. And so he spends half an hour haggling with Dad about the price because he wants to make sure his business needs are met.

The facts of the midget's poverty and Dad's offer of a large sum are insufficient to constitute, by themselves, an instance of exploitation. The case is not determined.

I think in a society where bargaining about everything is normal, an appearance of reluctance does not mean the same thing that it does in a Western society. That is, the person is not genuinely disinclined to do what is being asked. He is exaggerating or putting on reluctance because bargaining is socially expected and he considers it part of "who he is" as a member of that society to appear reluctant and bargain. How anyone in such societies figures out when the other person is really reluctant is a sociological question to which I, as a transparent American, don't know the answer.

Yes, yes, just that: the reluctance. I have a feeling that if the midget is no part of the natural community of the kid and his family, Dad's insistence at roping him into even the kind of quasi-community (i.e. a temporary relationship) that forms with a buyer-seller event against his will at being pulled into such a relationship is (at least) the beginning of the exploitation. Surely a person has a right to not be force into an economic negotiation, to be forced to say "I refuse that offer" when he shouldn't HAVE TO consider the offer. Which, I think, is perhaps why we think Dad's making a generic offer "$1 million to anyone short enough to have a shot at succeeding" that is not specific to this particular midget is less problematic than a Dad coming to the midget's house and importuning the guy directly. With a generic offer, the midget is not under any obligation to consider the offer and thus under no obligation to decide one way or another.

But if the midget has no reluctance at entering into a relationship, then at least one major element allowing for exploitation is simply not there.

But if the midget has no reluctance at entering into a relationship, then at least one major element allowing for exploitation is simply not there.

Yes, and that's the problem with the arguments put forth by Lydia and Aaron. They would save that midget from himself. They simply don't seem to believe that that midget has a right to make that call for himself. Hence the point about precisely where this paternalism ends. "Exploitation" is all around us because equality is a fiction with virtually no basis in reality.

The facts of the midget's poverty and Dad's offer of a large sum are insufficient to constitute, by themselves, an instance of exploitation. The case is not determined.

True, it requires an intent to manipulate on the part of the Dad.

Part of the confusion may be that the midget example involves saving and risking lives, which are odd things to try to put monetary value on. The case of selling bottled water in a disaster zone for $20 is clearer. In this case you have both an obvious position of weakness (thirsty victims) and a clearly unfair offer (overpriced water). There's also no clear boundary. You can't repeatedly take off one cent from the bottled water price to hit the "line of exploitation" or whatever you want to call it.

Mike, I don't think you are giving Lydia and Aaron enough credit - they are both willing to entertain and add qualifications to the issue. For example, Aaron accepted that if Dad's offer were not based on the midget's poverty, and he would have made the same offer to anybody available, then it wasn't exploitation (at least not on the basis of the poverty).

Also, you completely ignore the possibility, which I tendered, that maybe a person has a right not to be importuned with being put directly on the spot and directly having to state whether he is willing to accept an offer or not - that maybe he has a right not to be dragged into marketing negotiations even so far as to have to say "no", ESPECIALLY to have to say "no" over and over when he never had any intention of seriously considering the offer(s). If man is not fundamentally a homo economicus, then there is perhaps no presumptive right to demand of him that he bargain just because Dad wants to bargain. It isn't paternalism to say Dad has encroached the midget's rights to be left alone, especially if the offers keep coming and keep ratcheting up.

Which kind of speaks also to the earlier thoughts about being coerced (if he is tempted to decline) out of fear of the community reaction. If Dad singles him out specifically, that's a hugely different situation than if Dad merely says "$1 million to anyone who thinks they might be able to help here."

In this case you have both an obvious position of weakness (thirsty victims) and a clearly unfair offer (overpriced water). There's also no clear boundary. You can't repeatedly take off one cent from the bottled water price to hit the "line of exploitation" or whatever you want to call it.

Matt, that's an excellent point. I tend to think that one of the features of exploitation can be seen when accidentally coming across a windfall advantage, and using it as if it were not a windfall. In the case of $20 water bottles, a surcharge, even a steep surcharge, for certain elements of supply conditions would make sense. But not $18 worth. If the water seller planned beforehand, and stored a stock of water for the eventuality, he should be paid both for the storage costs and for the entrepreneur risks (what if the disaster never hit, what if it took out his water supply, etc), yes. These are compensable aspects. But if he did absolutely nothing to happen to be in the right place at the right time with more water than he happens to need, then he can't reasonably expect compensation for them. In order for him to want to sell his water at such a high price, he basically has to want to benefit directly from others' misfortune, rather than the properly human motivation of profiting by being of benefit to others - mutual gain. With a windfall, the person who first comes across the lucky windfall may well benefit, but for him to benefit to the detriment of others seems contrary to human social good.

Mike, one thing that I think is complicating the issue concerning kidney sale is that I believe it is wrong, absolutely wrong, for reasons in addition to the issue of exploitation. Nobody should be buying and selling a kidney, period, even if no exploitation is involved. That is one reason why I am so willing cheerfully to condemn and outlaw all such transactions, including (to my mind, especially, but at least including) those with people in dire poverty. Which is what you call "paternalism."

The distinction between the kidney sale and the midget scenario is that in the latter I removed the intrinsically wrong aspect. I did this deliberately in order to try to isolate the exploitation aspect. But when you imply that I would not care if the midget were perfectly willing and not being manipulated in any way, you are incorrect. To my mind, that does make a difference _there_, because we aren't talking about a transaction that is intrinsically wrong anyway.

Where we are talking about people selling their bodies, whether for sex or for organ transplant, then their willingness (if indeed they are willing) is quite frankly sad and deeply disordered, because they are selling something that _should never_ be sold.

So don't confuse the two scenarios, because there is that important distinction.

I also have a theory, for what theories are worth, that when we are talking about selling things that should never be sold, there is a kind of dark undertow that, by a sort of sociological law (though not a logical law), moves such "markets" toward coercion, fraud, and exploitation almost inexorably. In Lebanon right now there are doctors lying outright to Syrian refugee kidney sellers and telling them, "With any luck, it will grow back." That is not a made-up story. We see something similar with the link between legal prostitution (in Germany and Holland, most notably) and human trafficking. It seems that at some deep level many people really are reluctant to sell these things that should never be sold, which makes it highly likely that, where those things are widely bought and sold, coercion, fraud, and exploitation will be involved.

For example, Aaron accepted that if Dad's offer were not based on the midget's poverty, and he would have made the same offer to anybody available, then it wasn't exploitation (at least not on the basis of the poverty)

Sounds like something we can only judge as a matter of the heart in most cases then. ER F

Also, you completely ignore the possibility, which I tendered, that maybe a person has a right not to be importuned with being put directly on the spot and directly having to state whether he is willing to accept an offer or not - that maybe he has a right not to be dragged into marketing negotiations even so far as to have to say "no"

Actually, I think my comments anticipate the possibility of such a right by pointing out all of the ways in which Scenario A can be coercive toward the midget.

Where we are talking about people selling their bodies, whether for sex or for organ transplant, then their willingness (if indeed they are willing) is quite frankly sad and deeply disordered, because they are selling something that _should never_ be sold.

But then that raises a serious question about the moral legitimacy of giving away a kidney, blood, etc. Giving away a kidney for free is still an act of mutilation on the body for the benefit of another. I don't see any valid principle which provides that a poor man can give a rich man a kidney for nothing, but the rich man cannot offer a lot of money for the same act.

I don't see any valid principle which provides that a poor man can give a rich man a kidney for nothing, but the rich man cannot offer a lot of money for the same act.

I suspect but don't have time to look back to check that we are rehashing some of the same lines we went over in the thread 5 1/2 years ago.

Because of the serious possible repercussions of live kidney donation for the long-term health of the donor (which is not the case with blood donation, by the way), I myself have some doubts about its morality. About dead donor donation I have _huge_ doubts concerning morality, for reasons concerning procurement which I have discussed at length in other posts. However, I am setting both sets of doubts aside for these purposes.

Selling can, in my view, be cleanly and clearly separated out from such doubts. Our bodies are not mere property, not anybody's property except God's, and therefore they are not the sorts of things that rightly can be _sold_ at all. Selling a body part for money definitely "says" that the body part is sheer property. Whether there can ever be a case where a living donor can morally donate a kidney is a separate question. After all, by the analogy with sex (which I admit is not absolutely perfect), it obviously does not follow from the fact that sex should never be sold that no one should ever have sex.

I have doubts about the right way to understand donating a kidney. I don't think I have a handle on the potentially contradictory standards that seem applicable. But whatever the way to resolve the contradictions, Lydia seems right that selling body parts apparently runs toward all sorts of pernicious deformities of "the market", and that itself makes selling very suspect. Theoretically, it could be that the act is not intrinsically disordered, but is so fraught with moral dangers that the only morally safe setup is one of voluntary (i.e. free) donations, not sales. Lydia thinks rather that the act of selling is itself disordered because it treats the body part (and, therefore, the body) as a commercial product, not as an integral part of an irreplaceable, unpriceable person. I have doubts about just how far that can be taken in terms of prohibiting organ donation altogether, but the main possibility I can see which might permit organ donation doesn't seem to leave room for commercial transaction: The donor's willing and loving decision to treat the health of another as just as valuable to him as his own health seems to imply a donative approach only, not a sale.

Analogously: we have often said that a person cannot morally sell himself into slavery. This I am sure is right. I recalled, earlier today, an apparent hiccup to that rule: the Church used to be OK with a person permitting himself to replace a slave by offering himself in their place. (This was sometimes done by members of a couple of religious orders to the relief of a slave captured by Muslims in North Africa.) But now I think the same principle applies: out of charity, the donor donates himself to take the place of the sufferer. But by principle, the donor cannot buy someone else to replace the target sufferer, that's just extending the same evil further - that of treating persons as things.

Some things just cannot be handled as commercial exchanges. A sacrificial offering to God cannot be the right kind of thing if you just purchase the services of a priest without any sacrificial intent of your own. A marriage cannot be bought by purchase, because the marital contract is an agreement of a mutual gift of persons. The donation of self precludes a sale. Likewise, I suggest, the only morally justifiable basis for permitting the mutilation of your own body by taking out a kidney (a health, functioning kidney, that is) is to make a gift of self to the extent of treating another's health as equally valuable and as integral to your own good, an act of charity. Since commercial transactions take place precisely by transferring something that is more valuable to the other party than it is to you, and receiving something more valuable to you than what you gave up, treating your own body part as less valuable than external goods is to mis-use your body. Selling yourself by parts is participating in exactly the same evil as selling yourself into slavery.

Some replies.

Aaron, I am sensitive to the problem, but I think you have failed to identify additional necessary criteria. Otherwise ALL economic transactions between a rich and a poor person (or even, a "poorer person" even if in middle class) will fall into exploitation.

No, only when the transaction is "unfair" - for example, paying a worker less than a just wage, whatever that is. Remember, I said that a notion of fairness is crucial.

I've got no problem with defining such transactions as "micro-exploitation," provided the "exploiter" is somewhat conscious of the fact he's taking advantage.(Presumably, he justifies it to himself.) I think we just call it "exploitation" when the unfairness and power imbalance are above some threshold. This continuity between everyday transactions and extreme cases is exactly why libertarians can deny that exploitation exists, and why theorists like Hobbes can claim that even coerced agreements are morally binding (because, Hobbes correctly says, virtually all agreements are between parties of unequal strength).

Sounds like something we can only judge as a matter of the heart in most cases then.

Yes, my definition of exploitation, which I think is the common one, has both subjective and objective criteria. I was going to say something about this when I read the "Lassie" example. If the duke had actually believed he was benefiting the family by buying their dog (maybe he thought that outright charity would be demeaning), then it would not have been exploitation.

The problem with the midget scenario is that either way, you are exploiting the midget. You are calling upon him in scenario A to take a risk for no personal gain that may leave his family in ruin and without even an assurance that the community will be there for his family should something happen.

The appeal in scenario A might be wrong for a poor person for the reason you said, but even if it is, it's not exploitation. It's not taking advantage of the person's poverty; it's being inconsiderate of the person's poverty. Again, I think this matches the common usage of the word.

Correction to the above: I should have said, "If the duke had bought the dog in order to benefit the family...." The benefit would have to be a motivation, not a side-effect. All exploiters tell themselves they're benefiting the exploited, and often they really are.

In some cases, you're right that it wouldn't be exploitative, but in others it would. For example, if the midget is unpopular the community can exploit that as leverage. In a society where that has implications for the midget's basic ability to function in the society and economy, that can be indirect exploitation. If the midget is a proud person, they can also exploit his pride. I was pointing out that there are non-economic ways of exploiting the midget in Scenario A that ought to be explored before saying Scenario A is clearly superior in any way to Scenario B.

BTW, Lydia, I do agree that there are serious ethical implications for selling body parts. The only feasible way I could see to permit it would be to create a registry with a "cooling off period" of a few years before any transaction could take place. That would at least require a poor person to have hopefully given it considerable thought before going through with it.

It could also be that the midget is willing to risk himself, but is held back because he has 8 small children who totally rely upon him for all support. Suppose it was changed from 'here's a HUGE amount of money' to 'we will make sure your family is taken care of if your perish.'?

Let me try this. First of all let's take William Luse's idea: it is wrong to offer a gallon of gas to a motorist stranded in the desert for a thousand dollars, why? Because the money is not merited, not deserved. Not when it happens randomly. Now if you constantly patrol the desert searching stranded motorists, then it is OK to recover the costs of that and make a small profit, by charging a higher price. Because there is merit in it. And investment.

So:

- If a middle class person sells a kidney let's assume it is OK
- If a poor person sells a kidney for the same price, OK
- If a poor person sells for a lower price, not OK because there is no merit or desert, nor investment on the part of the buyer

Suppose it was changed from 'here's a HUGE amount of money' to 'we will make sure your family is taken care of if your perish.'?

Mike in KC, I would think that would be easily taken care of by a general offer to care for the family of anyone who perishes in the attempt to save the child, as Tony has suggested. Such an offer would (at least plausibly) remove the notion of _using_ a given person's poverty as a lever to get him to severely risk his life.

[Spoiler alert!]

Have you ever seen Spielberg's "Eyes" from Serling's Night Gallery? It features Joan Crawford as a rich blind woman who purchases some poor sap's eyes for just one evening of sight. She has everything prepared for her (her art collection and such) one evening of vision -- alone. Then, when she is to remove her bandages, the power goes out. She thinks that the operation has failed. In the morning, she detects light for the first time, though her vision is leaving. And I won't reveal the ending. It is short but powerful.

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