What is the societal cost of a gun that has never been used?
But that imposes an enormous societal cost that few other nations have been willing to bear.
Insurance, like taxes, quantifies the perceived societal cost of an activity.
According to current estimates, carbon emissions from driving impose a societal cost of about $20 billion a year.
Such requirements enable our free-enterprise system to function -- and disobedience carries a personal as well as a societal cost.
Carbon emissions have an "unpriced" societal cost in terms of their deleterious effects on the earth's climate.
But the refusal to institute proper HIV education in schools also comes at a wider, societal cost.
In countless African villages, children repeatedly contract malaria, many die or are chronically ill, and the societal cost is huge.
It may be better for an individual business but at what wider societal cost?
Cacioppo finds a societal cost to loneliness in its effects on health.
Reimbursement has obvious societal cost implications, but these must be considered in full.
