Hard disagree. There is a lot of space between people being completely free to leave a job they dislike, and being held in a job by explicit threats of violence, and there's not a sharp line marking where practices get exploitative.

Consider your own situation, and ask yourself "what must be true for 'I can't afford to change jobs' to also be true?" There are definitely situations where whatever must be true is not that unlikely, and there are definitely employers who use them as leverage against their workforce. Non-compete agreements applied to employees of fast food restaurants, and no-poach agreements between fast food restaurants is a famous example of this.

> and ask yourself "what must be true for 'I can't afford to change jobs' to also be true?"

There's only one thing: I can't find another job.

> There are definitely situations where whatever must be true is not that unlikely, and there are definitely employers who use them as leverage against their workforce.

Except none of that is happening here, they can leave whenever they want. They just don't want to because they feel this is the best job they can get given their particular circumstance.

>Except none of that is happening here, they can leave whenever they want. They just don't want to because they feel this is the best job they can get given their particular circumstance.

This is a non-sequitur both in general and in the specific case of the goat herders from Peru. You're aware that ff you're a goat herder, its not like your decades of skill transfer easily to working in a warehouse? This is not "I happened into goat herding 3 months ago, and now I'm not sure I could do better". This is "I've been living around goats since I was born, and actively raising goats since I could walk".

* * *

Your point is that, since these goat herders are not being exploited (which is debatable, but I at least partially agree), that worker exploitation does not exist anywhere?

You originally said this: >There is no such thing. (Unless you are enslaving people.) People have agency and are are perfectly willing and able to change jobs if they don't like them.

>Hiring someene to do something isn't "exploiting" them.

I disagreed, because (as I said), there's a lot of things that are exploitation, even if they clearly aren't chattel slavery.

I also want to draw attention to the distinction between "don't want to" and "can't", because I think you're interpreting the one as the other, when its convenient for your argument.