Should the monetary exchange rate for a good or service include the ecological and societal expense of making, dispersing, using, and discarding the given good or service? Why or why not?
Certainly, and in a social-economic system based upon the arbitration and full restitution, the people injuring others would have to pay for the damage done to others. For example: I build a factory that uses tons of bleach in the process. Not wanting to change my production methods or properly dispose of the bleach, I just dump it in the local river. Now people down stream will have a claim for damages that this bleach does to their persons or property. The damage done may be very expensive to restitute.
In this system there will be arbitrators that sell their adjudication services. Either party could seek out their own arbitrator. If I refuse to address the injured claim then the injured could boycott the company and ask others to do the same. Furthermore the insurance companies of the injured may also take up claims with the factory. Eventually there will be pressure placed upon the factory or it will go out of business. Keep in mind that businesses like today would spend billions on their reputations and would hate to injure people and ruin those reputations. Furthermore, unlike today, the owners of a business would not have corporate protection from liability and would thus be more careful.
(devli’s advocate)
how about an additional tax to the monetary exchange rate of goods and services? would that not hinder and/or diminish such activity in the first place?
How on earth would the state even know where to set it so as not to discourage a tolerable level of such activities (by tolerable I mean an amount individuals would consent to in exchange for whatever benefits, e.g. industrial progress)? It might go overboard, it might not nearly suffice enough. What is required is the internalisation of all costs as Bogart alluded to - a tax will most likely not achieve this.