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Aristotle and the Exploitation of Labor

Is buying products that are the result of labor exploitation ever ethically viable? The question most central to this discussion is whether or not labor exploitation is a relative or absolute evil. And as with most things in life, the answer is not the same for each situation. The best way to achieve the golden mean in this area of life is to know what forms of labor exploitation are practiced and to determine which ones are ethnocentric judgments and which are truly human tragedies.

One argument about labor exploitation is that the concept was developed by the labor movement. Through a combination of lobbying, strikes, and public awareness the "developed countries" instituted laws that set working conditions. Because these obviously make workers lives better, and since most people are workers at one time or another, these initiatives were beneficial to society.

However, they are only possible because the countries that set the laws have reached a minimum level of economic development. What we see as worker exploitation may in fact be the maturing of an economic system. Take for example minimum wage. This is a legal protection for the least educated and most vulnerable workers in a developed society. It causes a certain amount of unemployment, for some workers are not productive enough to warrant even this wage, but society has put into place institutions like social security to provide for these people.

In other societies, there is not sufficient development of resources to employ everyone. Each worker is needed both to support the economy and to invest in the infrastructure. Those workers that are not employed are both able to work and often have people dependent on them. If a minimum wage was set both the economy and the individual workers would suffer. Our judgment that this is "labor exploitation" is very ethnocentric. Supporting this type of "exploitation" by purchasing products in countries where...

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Aristotle and the Exploitation of Labor. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:11, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/2000265.html