the price of progress

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the costs, sacrifices, disruptions, and losses that inevitably accompany beneficial change and advancement; the phrase acknowledges that progress is never purely positive — it always displaces something, whether traditional livelihoods, ways of life, ecological habitats, or social structures that gave meaning to people's lives; used both to justify the costs of change as unavoidable and necessary, and critically to question whether the benefits of a particular development genuinely outweigh the harms it causes to those who bear its costs without sharing its benefits