# cost (economic)

the quantity of work that is loss for a product

- Computed level: L8 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: review  ·  Domain: everyday  ·  Arena: EmergenceLexicon

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [work](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-work.effort), [loss](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-loss.economic), [products](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-products.goods)

**Through:** work is given up and is loss for a product

**Novel properties:**
- exchange value
- monetary measure

## Examples
- The construction of the Three Gorges Dam required 100 million person-days of labor, displacing 1.3 million people. *(engineering)*
- Apple's 2023 supply chain absorbed $29.8 billion in losses from factory downtime and logistics disruptions. *(economics)*
- Photosynthesis in Amazonian trees converts sunlight into biomass at an average metabolic cost of 4.5 grams per square meter daily. *(biology)*

## Used by
- [financial](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-financial.economic) (L17)
- [no free openings](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-no-free-openings.no-openings) (L18)
- [rental](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-rental.economic) (L16)
- [stranger](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-stranger.unmodeled) (L15)

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-cost.economic*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-cost.economic.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*