The True Cost of Things
Part 1 of 7: The Question We Don’t Ask
How often do we find ourselves drawn to something—a shirt, a gadget, a home décor item—and without hesitation think,
That’s so cute. I need it. Then, almost as a reflex, we glance at the price. Only $X? Even better. The cost becomes the final nudge, not a moment for pause. But what if that same item was $X + 50? Would we still feel the same way? Would we still want it with the same urgency?
One of the few impulse purchases I made last year was a jumpsuit I found on sale for $26. The original price? Supposedly $100. Of course, we all know “original” prices are often just a game. Still, the jumpsuit was practical. Neutral. It met many of my needs. And yet... when I look at it, I don’t feel much joy. If I’m being honest, a big reason I bought it was because it was a deal. That’s the thing about prices: They rarely tell the whole story.
They don’t reveal what it truly took to make that item—from the human labor behind it, to the raw materials extracted, to the waste and emissions left behind. Economists have a name for these hidden ripple effects: externalities — costs or benefits passed along to people, communities, or ecosystems who never agreed to the exchange. Sometimes, externalities are positive. Like when a city transforms an unused lot into a public park, benefiting the whole community. But more often, especially in fast fashion and mass manufacturing, they’re negative:
Factories pumping toxins into water.
Communities forced to live with polluted air.
Workers paid unfairly or treated poorly.
Those aren’t costs reflected on a price tag—But someone, somewhere, is still paying for them. And so the question lingers: How would our choices shift if price tags captured the full weight of a product’s journey? What if we were asked not just to buy, but to acknowledge the true value—and impact— of what we consume?
This question has been sitting with me for a while—quietly bothering me every time I reach for something just because it’s a “good deal.”
I want to explore it out loud:
Why has the word dupe become a badge of honor?
How did we come to equate low price with high value?
And what’s been lost in that exchange?
I want to unpack the hidden costs we rarely account for— those externalities that silently shape the world behind our purchases— and imagine what it might look like to reconnect price with meaning. To shift toward a way of consuming that reflects what we truly value— not just what we can afford in the moment.
So I can’t help but ask: What if we actually saw those costs? Would we consume differently if the price of things included what they really took— from the planet, from the people who made them, from the systems we rely on? I’m not asking this to guilt-trip anyone into giving up their favorite sweater or gadget. But maybe we need a different lens— One that helps us look at price, value, and impact side by side. One that reveals how the numbers on a tag rarely tell the whole story.
