Definition of "exploitation" []

• The act of employing to the greatest possible advantage: exploitation of copper deposits. (noun)
• Utilization of another person or group for selfish purposes: exploitation of unwary consumers. (noun)
• An advertising or a publicity program. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price."
• "The term exploitation, for example, should be not a moralizing one but a cold measure of the difference between use value and exchange value, or between the wages earned at the coal face and the real worth of that labor to the mine owner."
• "But I think, applied to motives and results -- and with the power differential firmly in mind -- that notion of ethics can go deeper than just dismissing the commodified dreamcatcher as "tacky" like a galleria art snob; and it's not an either/or situation in which the exploitation is an alternative, contradictory reason for condemning the commodified dreamcatcher."