Savant

So it's not me giving all to someone else, but some balance where we both live quality lives worth living.

But the liver and volunteering still helps them more than it costs you, would still be a net gain.

Again, "good" depends on comparison. Let's say your only options were getting punched in face or losing an arm. In this scenario, getting punched in face is "good".

If this is based on practical options, then getting exploited is good because generally speaking, those with jobs are better than those without. People aren't lining up to hand out free money, so working is better than starving.

If it's based on the maximum you could give, then even donating a kidney isn't good because you also could have spent all day volunteering and given part of your liver too but you just gave your kidney.

Good doesn't mean the best possible option just like positive doesn't mean the biggest possible number. Otherwise why even have the word great? Or the word best?

SatanLucy wrote:

Again, what is good or bad depends on comparison. Saying exploitation is better than nothing is not saying exploitation is good, when better systems can be made which reduce exploitation and improve life quality more.

This is not a good way to evaluate things. I could say "punching someone in the face is good because it could be worse."

RemyBrown wrote:

-> For me to mark him he'd have to post a slur or say something racist or something on that level. 

He's said all the time that women are justified in choosing the bear over the strange man (so that's sexism).

If he said something like "the bear is better because men stink and are inferior to women" that would be explicit sexism. Otherwise, the sexism is at most inferred and that's not sufficient.

Those are actions that lead to bans. Your content does not need to be prohibited to be offensive.

Again, I'm fine with banning child labor and even using the government to coerce companies for the greater good. There are cases where exploitation is bad. If we're both in favor of mixed economies, then I'm not sure we have a material disagreement, I'm just saying exploitation is not inherently bad.

But would you have similar problems with a society that gave the same amount to charity and just exploited less? Assuming the exploitation was consensual and improved people's circumstances on top of the charity?

If your goal is helping others, then surely money you make can be used to help the people you exploited first, so it stops being exploitation.

Why? You've already helped them and there's diminishing returns.

To put things in perspective, if average American donated 20% of their income to charity, they would raise 12 trillions each year, and that's pretty much enough to solve any damn social issue in whole USA.

If your point is just charity is good then fine I agree. Maybe people are even obligated to give some amount. But above that I think exploitation is justified cause it is helping, just a limited amount. I don't think everyone is obligated to sell every organ they can and work long hours to maximally help.

The problem in "maximizing profit to help others" lies in the fact that each extra money can be further used to make new investments and maximize profit. So maximizing profit actually never ends in cycle and money never reaches people.

Or you reinvest some percent and donate the rest. Depends on the circumstances but that could be more effective.

I don't believe in "harm one to help another" approach.

Except exploitation isn't harm since it's better than nothing. In fact, not exploiting would be helping less than you could be since you wouldn't have the money to help others.

You don't have to give all your money, just extra

You said until poverty is eliminated.

And the nation will not go broke.

I was asking if individuals, without state backing, were obligated to give all their excess money to charity. I guess you think they are, so I guess from a hard utilitarianism view, exploitation is suboptimal. But I still think the optimal utilitarian path might involve exploiting some people in order to use the profit to help others.

For me to mark him he'd have to post a slur or say something racist or something on that level. If you block him and refuse to engage with him, I can take action. Otherwise I can't.

just give all extra until there are no more poor people

Pretty much anyone who tries that will go broke long before poverty is eliminated.

I don't think he's crossed the lines for what was voted offensive.

So everyone is obligated to give all their excess income to charity?

In any case, society where people help each other without seeking personal benefits each time is way better.

No one in this thread is denying that, the argument is that exploitation is better than inaction.

Maybe some exploitation is unavoidable, but government pretty much had to intervene to reduce exploitation for countless times in past few hundred years, because when left to itself, capitalism maximizes exploitation

Government regulation is not the same as Marxism. Most people defending what Marx calls capitalism are defending mixed economies, which are not the same as unregulated markets. I've already stated there are special cases where exploitation is coercive.

Wars, housing, healthcare, products designed to break down to increase sales rate, lobbying

I think healthcare and planned obsolescence were the two examples I mentioned already as two of the only exceptions. So yeah, there's not much beyond that. Zoning laws mainly survive because of votes from homeowners who want to keep their property values high but don't want to sell their houses. And with all of these, it's reducing the quality or availability of the product compared to free competition, but without the exploiters the product wouldn't be getting to people in the first place. If you have an issue with lobbying to reduce competition, that's just them reducing the availability of the very exploitation you're claiming to dislike.

Wars you can maybe argue, but in first-world countries I don't think lobbying is the primary political incentive, because politicians live and die by votes and if they start an unpopular war they throw a lot of those away. Politicians do it to look strong or appeal to voters or distract from domestic issues.

Additionally, most of these examples involve govt corruption, and, plenty of countries ban lobbying while still having markets. If we're at the point where we can get things accomplished via laws, why not stop at restricting lobbying rather than banning contracts altogether? At this point I think your issue is more with the political structure than with the actual exchanges.

pollution, obesity, depression, addiction-based design of products to increase sales rate

Kind of a stretch to say the companies are causing these problems to sell the solution. Some products cause problems and people buy them anyway, which is their choice, but that's not the same thing. Causing a broad societal problem to gain a market is pretty inefficient and runs into a tragedy of the commons since the benefits are shared by other companies in the industry. Pollution is an issue, but at that point the charge isn't even against exploitation anymore, it's just a totally different type of problem that wasn't really the point of the original post.

Some people are richer now, yes. The homeless arent.

Median incomes and quality of life have gone way up over the past century.

Offensiveness is based on what was voted offensive. People voted no marking if the insults are back and forth and don't get into slurs or racism.

I marked that comment as offensive. If SL makes a habit of these kinds of comments, he'll be marked as offensive.

"Most big companies are inventing new products rather than causing problems to create a need." -> I appreciate the opinion. I just disagree with it.

Its not the capitalists I am blaming, but exploiters, who as I said before also create new ways of exploitation.

Technology has improved and people are richer now than most earlier times in history. Companies are coming out with new products all the time. New computers, phones, accessories, every food product you can think of. How many examples can you think of where exploiters in first world countries are creating problems just to sell the solution? It happens, but it's the exception and not the rule.

Your brain struggles a lot with nuance, that is why you don't see it all addressed you. You filtered out every single part that addressed you which didn't fit an easy 'tit for tat' rebuttal style and would take time to internalise, research, process and reply to.

Because most of what you said about Christianity or society in general wasn't responsive to the narrow argument I am making. Even if I conceded it as true it wouldn't make my point wrong.

There is literally 0 correlation between the 2. Providing a lot of value and paying an employee the lowest you can get away with that saves them from starving... lol

I assume the employees attribute a lot of value to their life.

I'll respond to the parts of your comment that actually address my argument...

You can't reject a deal which you starve, become an incel, loser, broken and discarded if you fully reject.

If the employer is saving the employee from starvation then they are providing a lot of value, so why shouldn't they make a lot of money? Doctors make a lot of money for saving lives.

akin to a rapist saying the victim wanted it because he offered the victim a choice to starve instead

Rape is nonconsensual, and I'm not sure what it has to do with starvation.

Every single person of the opinion that exploitation is better than stagnation at all times, with no willingness to slow progress for a happier, healthier society, is nearly always themselves privileged enough to be the exploitative abuser or are stuck so low down the totem pole they are unemployed, live largely off of welfare and avoid the exploitation that way

Actually the people being exploited are clearly of the opinion that it is better than nothing. If they were not, they would just reject the deal. It seems illogical to say exploitation is worse than nothing and then say "they're desperate and have to accept the deal, if they do nothing they'll be worse off."

I don't think standard playground insults meet the offensive standard. However if you block someone and stop engaging with them, we can take action against them if they keep targeting you.

the evils of capitalism

Look at the shitshow America is with its obsession with liberty and capitalism

I think most of this is due to contracts failing to solve certain problems, not contracts themselves causing the problems. As Bubba said, exploitation is often better than inaction. That's not to say that we shouldn't do anything to solve problems contracts fail to address, and I think mixed economies can accomplish a lot through social welfare programs. But I think blaming contracts themselves is looking at the problem the wrong way.

Way more incentive when you can profit greatly from it by exploitation later.

Most big companies are inventing new products rather than causing problems to create a need. There are exceptions but the threat of lawsuits limits those. There's planned obsolescence and denial of care, but that's mitigating the benefit of the contract, not making it a net negative typically.

degradation of human relationships, those who arent helped because they cant be exploited good, and so on.

Some people being exploited is better than no one being exploited. I don't see how you can just blame capitalists for all the pre-existing issues in society.

exploitative conditions themselves harm health and mental health

The conditions exist whether the capitalist helps or does nothing.

No, creating conditions where people end up in situation where they are easier to exploit.

So either that involves active harm (which people have incentives to do anyway), or it means they are creating helpful opportunities.

Individually, yes. Long term, no.

How does a sum of positive numbers equal a negative number?

I think system based on exploitation rewards exploiters the most, and causes more exploitation in the long run

Good. If exploitation didn't help the people being exploited, they wouldn't agree to it. In fact, by the broad definition of exploitation we're using, aren't both sides exploiting each other? They're both threatening to not offer the thing that belongs to them without getting something else in exchange. Maybe you're only counting it if someone's life is in danger, but is anyone really in danger of starving in the first world because an employer won't hire them? They could still be self-employed.

exploiters will also seek to create exploiting situations, not just exploit when such chance appears on its own

So, stealing? People will still do that even if contracts are illegal. In fact, if we ban contracts, people will steal more due to shortages.

Exploitation only happens when exploiter takes greater value for him than what he gives, so long term it leads to concentration of power and wealth in few hands because exploiters always gain more than the exploited

Both sides gain value or neither side would agree. It's a positive-sum game.

this definition would include, say, the owner of a Somalian sweatshop who pays his workers in pennies because he knows a Somali single mother of 5 is desperate enough for work to accept his terms

I agree, and paying low wages is preferable to doing nothing prima facie.

it would include a man who offered a homeless woman the chance to spend the below-zero winter night inside his warm house in exchange for having sex with him once

If his house is the only shelter around, then I think this case is different because leaving someone to die in the cold wouldn't be justified in the first place. So exploitation is better than doing nothing, but doing nothing isn't justified.

However, your argument is comparison fallacy. Just because one thing is better than another, doesn't make either option good.

Okay, but if A > B, and B is justified, it stands to reason that A is justified as well. It seems to me that either not helping has to be justified in most cases, or everyone is obligated to give their excess income to the most effective charities.

I would say that capitalists who buy bunch of homes to increase home prices are pretty bad to begin with.

I think this is another special case because it's worse than doing nothing. But I also think people tend to pick out special cases and generalize profit as theft overall, when I think contracts are justified most of the time, except in special cases.