The Price of Somewhere Else

Jason Kottke, in The Rise of the Fast Food Veggie Burger, writes:

A meat burger that costs a dollar is just being paid for in other ways by someone or something else.

That reminds of something I heard Sharon Labchuk say once, many years ago, to the effect that the beauty of Prince Edward Island can exist, in part, because of ugliness that we outsource elsewhere.

Just because we don’t see many large factories on the Island polluting the air and water doesn’t mean that there aren’t factories polluting the air and water, making the cars and washing machines and paper plates and running shoes and kayaks and macaroni that we use.