Business jargon euphemizes human harm as ‘negative externalities’

Evidence

Milton Friedman, the foremost proponent of a corporate-centered ethic, contends that the sole social responsibility of corporate officials is to make money for shareholders (Friedman, 1970). However, the effects of business activities extend beyond mutual benefits for firms and their shareholders. … Some moneymaking activities adversely affect the lives of people who are not involved in those activities but nevertheless bear the penalty of collateral harmful life conditions. Business jargon linguistically sanitizes these human and environmental costs as “negative externalities.” Life in the societies of today is increasingly shaped by transnational interdependencies and the power of international financial capital (Keohane & Nye, 1977). Many corporate shareholders do not live in the regions contributing to their wealth. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2510

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘negative externalities’ as linguistic sanitization of collateral harm - the euphemism masking moral weight.
• XREF: Relates to moral disengagement through euphemistic labeling, which Bandura elsewhere identifies as a key disengagement mechanism. — connects to: Rhetorical unmasking of euphemism is central to exposing industrial harm — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 8
• ADDENDUM: The corporate phrase ‘negative externalities’ parallels how sacrificial practices get bureaucratically sanitized in ‘On Sacrifice’ - ritual framing that obscures the human cost.