There are two ways to cut costs. You can reduce waste and inefficiency. That's great. It's what makes the market system go round. But you can also cut costs by putting them off onto someone or something else. You can build cheap, ugly buildings that no one wants to live near or look at. You can muscle down your suppliers' prices, so they have to move production to poor communities and pay wages that won't support a decent life. You can hire part-time workers with no benefits and give them no training. Our taxes and insurance fees will pay for their health care...You can pressure towns for tax breaks and free roads and water lines and sewers. The other taxpayers will pick up the bill. You can pay only a fraction of the real costs of materials and energy. Nature will eat the damage. This kind of cost-cutting not only imposes injustices on others, it also undermines the market economy. It distorts prices so consumers cannot make rational decision. It rewards bigness and power, rather than real efficiency.

-- Donella Meadows, Darmouth University