The purpose of Ex-Cost is to expose externalized costs worldwide and then potentially return these costs to their originators rather than have them burden billions of innocent victims – us – the citizens of planet Earth.
What is an externalized cost? Here is some what Wikipedia says:Cost externalizing is a socio-economical term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party.
"The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation".
Fundamentally, cost externalization, occurs when a company transfers some of its moral responsibilities as costs to the community directly or as degradation to the environment. For example, railroads and airlines transfer the cost of fuel, noise, and terminal infrastructure to the community. Airlines and auto manufacturers transfer the cost of degraded air and water quality to the community and the environment. By externalizing to the community or the environment, many true costs become lost in analysis because the true cost is non-quantifiable and neither the community nor the environment have effective advocates to recoup the damages. A major modern theme in the relationship of business to society is the society's ability (or inability) to resist this kind of externalization. In its extreme, society collapses as business realizes its profits.
We at Ex-Cost, and you reading this as a citizen of this planet, would like to avert the last seven words of this description. As such we are tracking the following externalized costs; social, environmental and economical. Here are some descriptions of each:
If a family has to have both parents working to maintain an adequate level of living the social costs of this would be many to both the parents and their children.
This is where a corporation lobbies a state to give it a; $2.3 billion dollar tax break, numerous public works (docks, off ramps etc.) and then leaves that state when these externalized costs have been all exercised.
Say a timber company logged some very steep river valley slopes in the 1980’s. Now thirty years later these un-reclaimed roads and hill sides slide into the valley blocking roads, polluting rivers and destroying homes.
There are more externalized costs but these are the lion’s share and they touch every one of us, everywhere on this planet.
Here is a brief video that shows you how externalized costs can creep up on everyone on this planet:
