The Role of Advocacy Organizations in Reducing Negative Externalities

An externality is a cost that a corporation's actions impose on society. For example, a power plant may emit mercury but might not pay for the cost of that pollution to the people living near the plant. It is possible to analyze a diverse range of problems of society in these terms, including the health effects of corporate practices, the unsustainability of manufacturing processes, and the marketing of products contributing to environmental damage, and economic policies that maintain high levels of poverty due to effective lobbying by the business community. This article examines the problem of externalities in terms of metacontingencies. Externalities continue precisely because there is no cost to the organizations for practices that impose these costs on third parties. The article describes the cultural practices needed to motivate governments to make corporations bear the true costs of their practices-costs that are currently imposed on others.