On the question of exploitation that doesn’t involve rights violation, I think there are legitimate popular conceptions of “fairness,” rooted in reciprocity or distributive justice, that don’t necessarily involve enforceable rights. The whole conception of economic rents, or scarcity rents, as “unearned reward,” reflects some such cultural notion. The same is true of people born with superior innate abilities who just coast through life and have a relatively easy time of it. Such moral judgments do not equate to an entitlement to redress against them, but there is still a sense of unfairness about them.
When the rents result in long-term goods (like “price gouging” that encourages sellers to enter the market), such unfairness is not only more likely to be perceived as justified, but is in fact absolutely necessary for the market price system to function properly.
They become problematic when some form of artificial (i.e., state-enforced) scaricty protects the rents’ recipients from self-correction by the market.
The other question you raise, the empirical problems of verifying exploitation claims when no direct coercion is involved, involves some counter-factual speculation: if not for such-and-such state measure, I would be better off. It’s actually a pretty plausible argument, since the direction of harm can often be determined by common sense and praxeology. Quantifying the harm, or saying how different the status quo is from a non-coercive state, is another matter.
]]>That’s what I get for typing things at 3 in the morning.
]]>I hate to ask this question, but … who is Guy de Molinari? And is he any relation to Gustave?
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