One challenge facing moral condemnations of exploitation is the strong possibility that allegedly exploitative exchanges are mutually advantageous – beneficial to all participating parties. While it’s true that condemning an act becomes harder when a mutual advantage criterion is satisfied, little attention has focused on how exploitation might satisfy such a criterion.

I argue that current philosophical orthodoxy has been too quick to accept a framework containing an incorrect mutual advantage criterion. Specifically, exploitation is widely treated as a ‘micro level’ event, motivating the selection of a ‘no transaction’ baseline against which mutual advantage is measured. We should reject this micro level claim, and hence reject the standard baseline. This has further implications for how we should construe the important relationship between exploitation and the vulnerability of an exploited party. In defending these claims, I draw on examples of types of market exchange not often discussed in recent exploitation literature.