Opportunity Cost
The extent to which doing one thing means that you cannot at the same time do something else; the cost of having to forgo doing the next best thing—the thing which you would otherwise be doing with your time. For further definition, and discussion of its significance, see Slack and Taut.
Note that the ‘costs’ of some actions are actually benefits. For example, when you weed the vegetable bed, this has costs, in that it requires you to do a couple of hours’ work. However, if you enjoy it, if you benefit from the exercise which you would have to take anyway, and if you are not sacrificing some other important thing which you want or need to do more, then the cost of weeding the bed is negative—i.e., not a net cost, but a benefit.
Another example: the cost of energy-efficiency in your home as a measure to help to achieve the energy descent and stabilise the climate may not in fact be a cost at all. Unless it is expensive and inefficient, it will in due course save you money.
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