UnseenFront · Decision Products
Moral NPV
Standard valuation models price moral disorder at zero. History says zero is wrong. Moral NPV prices the disorder-linked costs your model leaves out — through disciplined, auditable adjustments to the numbers you already use.
The Problem
The most expensive line in your model is the one that isn’t there
Every standard DCF carries an implicit assumption: exposure to moral disorder — captive-demand revenue, externalized harm, coercive jurisdictions, decayed institutional cultures — costs nothing. That assumption held for Purdue Pharma’s projections, for Wells Fargo’s cross-sell targets, and for every model that valued Russian assets in 2021. In each case the cost was real, large, and arrived on a clock that primary sources let us reconstruct.
We do not claim these outcomes are certain, or even typical — in many cases, comparable exposure never crystallized within the investment horizon. We claim the probability isn’t zero, the cost when it arrives isn’t small, and a board deciding capital or mission deserves a number instead of a footnote.
What It Is
Four disciplined channels. One rule: no double counting.
Moral NPV is a fully specified methodology — a taxonomy of eighteen disorder-linked fragilities, jurisdiction scoring built on the Moral Disorder Index’s 195-country dataset, and adjustment mechanics that enter your valuation in exactly one of four places per risk.
Cash Flows
Haircuts for costs that reliably arrive — compliance drag, recurring penalties, remediation. The layer history shows to be near-certain is priced as expected cost, not scenario.
Discount Rate
A capped premium for diffuse, always-on drag — trust erosion, talent and counterparty friction. Hard ceiling; sharp events are never smuggled in here.
Scenarios
Explicit pricing for discontinuities — the settlement, the asset cap, the deplatforming, the expropriation. Severity shapes anchored to documented cases.
Terminal Value
Growth and multiple corrections where disorder erodes the franchise slowly — the decay that never makes headlines but compounds every year.
Output: your base NPV, the disorder-adjusted Moral NPV, the drag between them, and its discount-rate equivalent — with every adjustment itemized and every parameter tagged to its evidence.
The Evidence
We followed every comparable firm — not just the failures
The parameters are not asserted. Severity and timing are bounded by five documented crystallizations, reconstructed from primary sources — court filings, settlement agreements, regulatory orders. Probabilities are anchored to five matched cohorts: for each case, every comparable entity holding the same exposure at the same date, followed over the full window, non-crystallizers included.
opioid-economics firms hit material crystallization within 18 years of the first federal signal — three went bankrupt
identical exposure, different legal mechanism state — whether a recovery template is active or blocked dominates every other variable
coercion-flagged jurisdictions materially expropriated or constrained foreign capital within 15 years
Every parameter carries its evidence tag — backtest-bounded, cohort-anchored, or disclosed judgment. Nothing pretends to more evidence than it has.
The Discipline
Built to survive its most skeptical reader
Bands, never points
Scenario probabilities appear only as disclosed ranges anchored to cohort frequencies. We do not manufacture false precision, and we say so in every deliverable.
One risk, one channel
An absolute no-double-counting rule — and the audit checklist proving it ships with the report, not in a drawer.
Sealed ratings
Every engagement’s fragility ratings are cryptographically hashed at delivery and join a growing pre-registered record, scored against outcomes at five and ten years.
Blinded validation
The rating system is tested against history from vintage-locked information, under pre-committed pass/fail criteria — including the ones that would force us to demote our own defaults.
“We register our ratings before the outcomes are observable — a track record no one can retrofit.”
The Engagement
What you receive
- The answer, first. Base NPV, Moral NPV, disorder drag, and the three findings that drive the difference — on one page.
- The full fragility assessment. All eighteen fragilities rated for your project through two lenses: the entity itself, and every jurisdiction it touches.
- Scenario cards. Each discontinuity priced with its severity anchor, probability band, timing, and the historical case it resembles.
- What would change this assessment. A named watch-list of mechanism events and signals — so the report stays a living instrument, not a shelf document.
- The audit trail. The no-double-counting checklist, every parameter with its evidence tag and version, and a machine-readable record of the entire assessment.
- A finding either way. If the disorder-adjusted case confirms your base case, we say so with the same confidence. We do not engineer findings.
Who It’s For
Boards deciding before committing
Foundations and endowments screening capital deployments. Family offices weighing long-horizon positions. Mission-driven institutions choosing between projects. Investors entering jurisdictions where the published numbers and the lived reality diverge. If the decision commits capital, reputation, or mission for a decade, the disorder-adjusted number belongs in the room.
Where We Stand
What we claim — and what we don’t
This analysis does not claim that moral projects always outperform, or that disorder-linked exposure always crystallizes — in many cases it does not within the investment horizon. It claims that disorder carries costs that standard models underprice, and it prices those costs explicitly. Scenario probabilities are structured analyst judgment anchored to matched-cohort frequencies and bounded by documented historical cases; they are not empirical frequencies. All parameters are version-pinned and disclosed.
This statement appears, unaltered, in every Moral NPV deliverable. The restraint is the product.
Put a number on it
A Moral NPV Assessment starts from your existing model and your decision timeline. Initial scoping conversations are free.
Moral NPV is not investment advice. It is decision analysis for institutions that answer to more than the market.
Prefer email? assessments@unseenfront.com