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"It is a sad indictment of the human condition that wherever there is a market, people will strive to find a profit margin even when this results in human exploitation.

This is true of all markets, though. Plenty have been and are exploited in labor markets of all sorts. If the mere possibility of exploitation is sufficient to justify outlawing a market, then we must illegalize the hiring of miners, fruit pickers, construction workers, even office secretaries, which are occasionally sexually exploited by their bosses.

Because having a market for everything with no bounds isn't a good thing.

Sure, but why shouldn't the bound be after this? Certain markets would still be illegal.

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By the way, I'm not necessarily convinced that it should be a market, I just find these arguments weak.



True - and it's not by accident - a market exists only because exploiters do. The very purpose and mechanism of markets is to limit the degree (not prevalence) of exploitation by forcing exploiters to compete with each other. That's what markets are, that's the whole idea.

Where you want to make exploitation illegal (say drugs, prostitution) you don't want a market - but you lose it's benefits, too. For example by reducing competition and increasing the price of entry, thus greatly enriching the most successful criminal gangs. (Especially true re drugs.)


It's interesting to note that Marx's concept of exploitation (which is a much, much broader one than the examples you're using here, though they certainly qualify) does say that it would be within the best intersts of the working class as a whole to rise up against such a system and indeed to illegalise (well, prevent in some way) hiring.


Sure (though the concept of wage-slavery is older than Marx), and I'm not necessarily opposed to that either, but it doesn't really justify the status quo.




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