Reflections on Exchange Injustice in Generative Relational Systems

Abstract

An exchange can improve a person's position while placing unjustified demands on that person. Historical inquiry helps explain this possibility, yet a background wrong also requires a specified connection to the bargain under assessment. This paper develops a bounded transmission principle: a wrong bears on a particular transactional demand when that demand withholds an owed response, exercises wrongful control over alternatives, appropriates authority beyond the participants' standing, or claims to extinguish an obligation without an adequate basis. The principle identifies sufficient grounds of objection within its stated domain; it supplies neither a complete definition of exploitation nor a universal standard of fair price. The argument separates the recipient's acceptance, the provider's offer and demand, third-party enforcement, and the discharge of prior obligations. Paired cases show that these judgments can change independently while price and immediate benefit remain constant. A proposal to exchange RMB 10,000 for withdrawal from a collaboration develops the role of duration, reciprocal authorization, material urgency, and supported future opportunities. A capital-mediated consumption case examines the creation of identity-based inadequacy, the sale of a useful remedy, and commercial claims to moral authorship of love or belonging. Family, workplace, and colonial applications test the same distinctions under different distributions of responsibility. The resulting account connects historical repair to transaction-specific justification while preserving independent providers' legitimate claims and recipients' authority to make difficult choices. Its institutional implications concern the separation of emergency access from disputed conditions, the scope of enforcement, and the reconstruction of practical alternatives. The examples are conceptual constructions, and the proposed mechanisms require empirical investigation in concrete applications.