ABSTRACT
Hidden true costs are a major societal challenge that have created an unsustainable economy. Economists have long recognized that the solution is to identify and quantify (i.e., price) externalities, but the complexity of pricing externalities in practice and persuading the consuming public of its necessity is elusive to realize. True Price, a Dutch enterprise, was founded in 2012 to actualize this powerful century-old idea by using modern rights-based principles, leveraging twenty-first-century science and technology and demonstrating its possibility. It greatly benefits from the nascent True Cost Accounting movement. The theory of change of True Price holds that it is critical to involve consumers in this movement. Therefore, after eight years of calculating and improving true prices with its business partners, True Price opened a True Price Store for consumers in one of Amsterdam’s main shopping streets. The Store is intended to show that true pricing is possible. It also illustrates what true pricing is: taking action to transition towards a sustainable economy, based on true prices, through transparency about true prices, transformation of products to prevent external costs, transactions to pay, and remediate external costs, as well as taxing and thus taking out external costs.
