All companies try to cut costs by making someone else pay the price for what they do, a tendency economists call externalizing. For instance, polluting externalizes the costs of cleanup to the locals. Eliminating medical coverage externalizes an expensive benefit to employees. And persuading the federal government to buy your bad financial instruments externalizes the results of greed and stupidity to the American taxpayer.
But even though economists use this technical-sounding term, most of us would call it something simpler: selfishness. For any entity, including companies, there are two basic dispositions: trying to make others pay for you and paying for yourself. And because cleaning up your own messes is the key both to being moral and also to building a functioning society, we instill this habit in children from their earliest age.
Isn’t it interesting that we expect more from our toddlers than we do from the major elements of our corporate citizenry?
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