“Pricing the Unpriceable” reference to Kristoffer’s blog
November 23rd, 2011 • Uncategorized
Kristoffer Lien‘s last blog post talks about pricing the unpriceable, meaning that we price the externalities of consuming the products and paying fair prices. I really like this post, because it makes me think about issues such as workers in less developed countries are under paid and how some consumers are not being charged “the whole” of the products they consumed. For workers’ wages, there is Fair trade monitoring that the suppliers are being paid fairly, but for charging buyers what they needed to pay appears to be a problem still. It is almost impossible to charge these buyers the full price: the manufacturing price of the good as well as the impact the product brings to the envir0nment and society, because it is so hard to measure the negative impacts that these goods will bring to the third party. At the end of Kristoffer’s post, it mentions that “According to the Harvard Business Review, companies are beginning to price the “unpriceable”. Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy are working together with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to come up with ways to value ecosystems. Perhaps accountants will become one of the greatest contributers to counteracting climate change.” This is very good to know, as when the correct prices are being charged, maybe people can know the damages they cause, when the damages are measured in money amount and they will think more about the environment.