Opportunity Cost (Decomposed)

Canonical definition

Under AIM, any forgone return from redirecting capital or effort decomposes into PA, PI, and PM components. Compensating a party for legitimately forgone PA and P_I reflects genuine A-I sacrifice that was redirected. Compensating forgone PM reproduces mimetic extraction at one remove. The standard scalar "opportunity cost" label therefore cannot justify a return until decomposition is performed. Applied to surplus capital (capital the lender would not otherwise deploy productively), the productive opportunity-cost argument does not apply to the full balance on which interest is charged.