This is partially self-inflicted. Cheap air travel incentivizes more people to move overseas because they know their families are just a flight away. I once knew a person that lived and worked in the UK, but studied in Poland - she flew back and forth twice a month(!). I guess it would be fine, if not for the environmental costs.

Anyway, I have this feeling that you could justify just about anything if you dig for nth-order effects, but it doesn't change the fundamental point: a race to the bottom sacrifices everything that can be sacrifices. Environment is usually the first victim, quality the second, but safety trade-offs are eventually made too. At some point in a product category's lifecycle, one starts to wonder whether it's so degraded that it would be better if it didn't exist anymore.

And n-th order effects and externalities are specifically excluded from corporate accounting.

Which means we don't know how much these things actually cost in real terms. We also don't know how to quantify potential benefits.

(And if someone says 'Well, that's subjective' - so is nominal market value.)

There's conventional profit-loss accounting, and there's everything else. It seems the everything else can accumulate to ecosystem-threatening levels, and conventional accounting will continue to pretend this is financially irrelevant.