Underpaid work is exploitative even if you aren't killing your employees. Hope this helps.
Are you being paid market rate for where you live, without coercion and without collusion? And does it meet local minimum wage laws? And are you fully informed of working conditions, and is physical safety properly regulated?
If so, it's hard to see what's exploitative about it.
And nothing in the article suggests that any of the things I described (coercion, collusion, etc.) are happening here.
EDIT: this is US-centric of course, but I am fairly certain that outside of the EU, the story is much the same.
1. I doubt the employees in question were being paid anywhere near minimum wage, so I don't see how this is relevant
2. That just moves the question around. If the minimum wage was adjusted for inflation, does it make it magically not exploitative? What makes the original minimum wage not exploitative?
>and continue to lobby Congress (at a state and federal level) for favorable laws to protect them. If that’s not collusion in spirit, I don’t know what is.
You're going to have to be more specific here. Not all lobbying is "collusion in spirit" (whatever that means). For instance arguing to weakening environmental regulations might not be great, but it's not exactly "collusion" either.
You implied that wages being above the local minimum wage was a mark against exploitation. I counter that if business leaders (via lobbying, campaign donations, etc.) have kept the minimum wage lower than it would otherwise be, this is de facto exploitation; they’re just able to hide behind the law (that they created).
As to where the magic line of exploitation is, I don’t know, but it seems to be along the lines of Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity – I know when I see it. I don’t go so far as to say that paying anyone less than their output ultimately earns is exploitative, but my floor is substantially above minimum wage in any U.S. state.
> arguing to weakening environmental regulations… isn’t exactly collusion
If the EPA gets staffed by politicians eager to bend to the will of business, I don’t see how that isn’t collusion.
That's probably not the best thing to model your position off of, considering that was replaced with the Miller test in 1973, and he regrets saying it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
Moreover because it's opaque, arbitrary and inscrutable, it makes it impossible to have any constructive conversation about why exactly it's exploitative. For instance, you claim that the minimum wages in all US states are "exploitative", but provide no arguments in favor.
>If the EPA gets staffed by politicians eager to bend to the will of business, I don’t see how that isn’t collusion.
That's a subset of "lobbying" though. Recall my claim isn't that lobbying involves no collusion, it's that lobbying could involve no collusion.
OK then, _you_ define exploitation. And if you bust out the dictionary, "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work," then I request that you define unfair. That's the problem – this is all highly subjective, and it's unlikely that we're going to agree.
> That's a subset of "lobbying" though. Recall my claim isn't that lobbying involves no collusion, it's that lobbying could involve no collusion.
Sure, and ISPs could treat customers better, but they're not going to. Lobbying as the U.S. has it is essentially all a form of collusion and/or bribery. Donate $10K to my campaign fund, and maybe your desired verbiage winds up in the bill. Treat my industry how we'd like, and there's a sweet post-government job waiting for you on K Street.
I don't deny that the ability for a person to go lobby their representatives is a critical part of a functional democratic republic. And, it makes sense to have a centralized voice – for example, it wouldn't be efficient for every single farmer to go speak to their reps independently. But at some point along the line, it stops being actual people discussing their issues with their elected officials, and becomes corporations showering government in money to buy the future they want.