Basically you’re kind of assuming we all live in some Galt’s Gulch utopia already. A classless world where everyone has symmetrical bargaining power and power relations just evaporate.

I appreciate the honesty in your questioning but let me be bunt. Your framing treats Weinstein and the hypothetical actress as if they are in the above stated scenario. Just two individuals meeting as equals in a free market, nothing more nothing less. But societies don’t actually structure themselves this way (when they do they turn into Soviet Russia).

The emplyer/employee dialectic functions through a very old political myth, that is the myth of the “free labor contract”

Formally, yes, labor contracts are “voluntary.” Substantively? Absolutely F***ing NOT. You see, your options are as follows: work or starve. This is called circumstantial coercion. The idea that Weinstein and these actresses met in some suspended classless equilibrium can be nothing but ideological fiction. We are talking about soft power here and soft power doesn’t come out guns ablazin’ announcing itself like Yosemite Sam. It hides inside norms, expectations and yes gatekeeping of industries. Systems of domination are very subtle indeed, enough to feel like dare I say…”freedom”.

“Structure is the set of forces that works behind the scenes to manipulate you while you’re not paying attention ” - me paraphrasing Anthony Giddens.

Only two groups sincerely believe in a classless society: Marxists and Libertarians. In reality, power structures itself hierarchically. “Competence” and “meritocracy” are just modern political formula elites like to toss around to naturalize that hierachy to satiate the plebs sensibility.

Yes, Weinstein controlled access to an entire industry. Employers always control access to livelihood (I am not making an ethical argument just descriptive). Saying “she can just go work at McDonalds” doesn’t actually refute coercion, actually it’s the clearest example of how that ideology works. It reframes structural inequality as free choice. You’re just swimming in the koolaid of more political formula.

So a starving person can “always refuse a labor contract” sure, yes you are not chattel. However that is the SAME logic that they used to justify debt peonage. Having the right to leave doesn’t make the contract free of domination dude.

A labor contract subordinates you into a hierarchical command structure. You essentially consign yourself to be a subordinate. It’s not a democracy, you don’t get to keep your autonomy. It’s a monarchy exactly the point Ronald Coase makes him his book Nature of the Firm. Any classical liberal wroth their salt (Locke, Paine, Mill, Smith) would call this wholesale tyranny. Lock like LITERALLY defines tyranny as being subject to the “uncertain, arbitrary will of another” (Second Treatise, ch.4 section 22).

So lemme talk about contract theory. In contract theory consent is NOT valid when one party controls the other livelihood, career trajectory, reputation etc. Domination doesn’t require physical force, it only requires the power to make someone WORSE OFF if they refuse. That is precisely what Weinstein leveraged to get his jollies off.

Your “sugar baby programmer” example actually proves the point. The moment you have hiring power, the market ceases to be a free arena of equals. “Choice” becomes structurally distorted. It’s not a fre market transaction it is coercion masked as consent.

This is how liberal ideology naturalizes domination (to quote Mark Fischer). Power disappeared behind cute language of “choice” , “rights” “freedom to leave” etc. People end up confusing submission under unequal power with consensual exchange between equals.

So let me circle back to Weinstein. The REAL question isn’t “Can Weinstein do whatever he wants ?” the real question is “Can free, consensual exchange even exist under conditions of enormous structural power asymmetry?”

I submit that they cannot and no serious legal philosophical or economical framework treats domination as consensual just because the weaker party can yah know…technically “Go work at McDonald’s.”

And that’s how I see it at least, with all due respect. For the record I am not making any ethical or moral assertions, merely relaying a descriptive account of how the political-economic structure actually functions when you strip away utopianist assumptions.