Raise the Hammer

internalista,

I generally agree with your point above. My remarks were for the most part disingenuous, and were made largely to offer a counterpoint to the remarkable uniformity of viewpoint on RTH.

That being said, they were not entirely disingenuous ...

It's certainly true that the market and economic models generally externalize what you call "unaccounted costs" (by definition). The problem is that these "unaccounted costs" are for the most part also unaccountable. That is to say, they simply don't make sense within the rubric of economic analysis because they are not real costs, per se, but rather something much more nebulous (we might call them "peripheral consequences" or "extrinsic negative effects", etc.). Now, given that the market is a beast purely of economics, it would be obtuse to insist that its operatives try to take into account something which by defintion is unaccountable on their terms. Before an "unaccounted cost" can be realized within the market it first must be turned into a real cost, which can be done through the imposition of fines, taxes, duties (e.g. emission caps), etc. So until these "unaccounted costs" are converted into real costs (and this is a function of government, not the market) it really is fair to say that industry produces more value than it consumes. For something like a pristine environment, a stable climate and an intact ecosystem has no value until we add it.

As for your remark that the market "ignore[s] the fact that many of our feedstocks in energy and materials are non-renewable, one-time endowments that we're steadily consuming", this is simply untrue. Do you never read the business section? Alarm over the depletion of natural energy reserves (and consequentially soaring energy costs) relative to exponentially increasing demand is probably the most important dialogue in the business world today.