> The function has another variable, which is access to and knowledge of capital. I can choose to employ someone, but it won't mean I have the means to do it.

its true, in a restricted or regulated market, access to capital may be limited.

> Economic coercion is also inescapable

I'm not familiar with this term and the search engine brought up definitions from international politics.

> Yet even mutually satisfactory relationships can be exploitative; it's interesting that no comparison is made to feudalism or sharecropping - I suppose they're too similar to the current primary economic activity.

I'm not sure how you're defining "exploitative" but you seem to be discounting the interests of the parties to the transaction. I consider that to be poor argumentation and it leaves me unpersuaded. The comparison to sharecropping and feudalism is apt and I think it would be instructive to see why you think they're similar.

> How do you know that? What ties economic outcome to just desert?

Because ethical considerations that treat each party as an autonomous agent are satisfied.

> I know of several instances of low economic reward for brilliance, and high economic reward which isn't tied to any personal achievement.

Thats your opinion, when you're the one writing the checks, you get to decide what size to make them.

> Philanthropy (and indeed the human urge to help those less fortunate) go some way to disprove this; we recognize that the market doesn't always reward correctly - and I think in many cases it doesn't, and it's unclear to me what the freedom of the market has to do with justice for the employees.

Of course we don't always agree with the outcome of market activity, we can imagine better possible worlds without the material constraints the market is solving for. But the market allows for the employees (and consumers, and everyone else) to select for the best possible available deal given material and social constraints. The justice comes in not forcing them to make any deals if they don't want to.

> Mutual, but possibly exploitative or with great power imbalance.

That really depends on what kind of power you're referring to. In a free market, when each party has the ability to terminate the relationship, then both parties are equally powerful in their ability to walk away. This ensures the relationship is mutually beneficial and therefore a Pareto improvement.

> you have one bargaining chip with your employer, which is your employment, but the employer holds many more chips, because of all the people she employs. She can (generally) afford to lose you only because she has more leverage and more chips.

Yes and the employee has the capacity to make much more money because of their access to capital that they aren't responsible for, they can do one thing well and rely on the capitalist to bundle all the associated parts into a deliverable product, and they get inside access to a profitable company. Some people are more skilled, some are more talented, some have more stuff. Some are good at putting it all together and driving it at a goal.

> it's unclear to me that these are of equal value in the current system.

Value is subjective. Its unclear to me why you would even be in a position to tell two parties that their mutual employment transaction was exploitation without knowing the specifics.

> It's not mere preference, it's a human need to satisfy the base instinct to live - or at least live with some dignity. It's also a near-requirement; taxes make it so. Plenty of things are choices we simply "don't like the consequences of" - someone telling me to hand over my wallet or have my legs broken (and get some food and clothing in return) is also just a "matter of preference" and I "won't like the consequences". Some would even choose the latter.

Well if you're telling me you want to live a long time, then yeah someone is going to have to grow food, purify water, and put a roof up for you. I don't know why people always pull this emotional sleight-of-hand about calling employment "slavery" and chattering on and on about being forced to toil in a factory on some fatcat's toolroom lathe; and when you point out that lathe operator is a skilled job making well over a living wage and that no one is forcing you to work in a factory in the US anyway, we get this rhetorical two-step where we get the sob story about human dignity and starvation; when what you're really talking about is eating food that other people labored to create without allowing them the basic human right of deciding how much their labor is worth.

> When you think of "can" outside a metaphysical free will question and investigate further into capabilities[1] and structural pressures, the picture is much less clear - and I think it's a little dishonest to interpret "can" in a way which implies it's like choosing chocolate or vanilla (and I just happen to be pushed toward chocolate).

It's a preference, just one that accords with long-developed evolutionary pressures. You prefer to eat because all the humans who didn't prefer to eat as much as the people today were outcompeted. So it's not like chocolate or vanilla, but it's not like having your legs broken either. Its just a biological/physical set of facts that you want to stay alive, you need to eat to stay alive, and someone has to make the food. In a market economy, anyone with means can make food. In a regulated market economy, anyone with means and regulatory permission can make food. In a planned economy, only those with the planners' permission can make food.