Labor sacrifice is both absolute discomfort and relative opportunity cost

Evidence

The sacrifice which we make of labor in exchange is therefore of two sorts, of an absolute and a relative sort. The discomfort we accept is in the one case directly bound up with the labor itself, because the labor is annoying and troublesome. In the case where the labor itself is of eudaemonistic irrelevance or even of positive value, and when we can attain one object only at the cost of denying ourselves another, the frustration is indirect. The instances of happily done labor are thereby reduced to the form of exchange entailing renunciation, the form which characterizes all aspects of economic life. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 234

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes two meanings of sacrifice in exchange, absolute and relative (opportunity cost).