True Costs, Economy
11. In order for market forces to govern a sustainable world, environmental and social costs must be accounted for. The way mainstream economists view the world, countless true environmental and social costs are nonchalantly brushed aside – dismissed as “externalities”. Then, with a straight face, these same economists insist that the “wise and invisible hand of the free market” should be allowed to decide things for us. We might as well have a chimpanzee with a Ouija board making some of society’s more important decisions. It’s absurd. For example, if the true environmental and social costs of fossil fuels were accounted for, they would be far more expensive and we would be living in a very different world with dramatically different transportation, land use, manufacturing and agriculture.