Variable [C]: The Cost of Loss

 This variable can be measured by quantifying 3 subvariables:  

Uniqueness: How many others like it there are available and how many different or similar features the item has from others like it. 
Replaceability: How much effort, time, energy or resources are needed to (re)create.    
Importance: How much use, in time and instances, the item had. By the amount of increase/decrease in efficiency with or without it. By the consequence of its absence.  
 

Imagine the following two scenarios involving the loss of a pencil. 

You're about to draw something as a hobby but notice you've lost your pencil, you have a pack of 10 pencils of this same type, so you just grab another one. The store where you bought them is also around the corner, so grabbing another pack is also a simple task. 

You're about to take a test, which requires a no.2 pencil. You managed to buy the last no.2 pencil they had at the store, which is 10 miles away. However, the pencil is now missing due to a hole in your bag. 

In each scenario, the importance of the item determines a baseline cost defined by the consequences of its presence or absence, which will often be external factors like a situation that calls for the need of the item. The replaceability of the item depends on the resources necessary to replace; the size of this variable can range from merely needing to extend a hand to grab another from a pile to an expert craftman creating one from raw materials, to a society investing in factories that standardize their construction. Uniqueness can depend on how much time is given to pick out details of the thing, and how much these details can be distinguished from similar others.

There is some interplay among these sub-variables, importance has a nullifying effect on the other variables in the sense that if the item's importance is zero then no attention or effort is given to replacing or uniqueness; high repleacability lowers an individual item's importance compared to its potential replacements; lower importance on the item's details, defining its uniqueness, improves how flexible we can be in replacing the item; if the resources necessary to replace exceeds available resources or if the resources can't be applied because of missing information, equipment, expertise or time, then the item becomes irreplaceable which makes the item more unique; high importance influences how much effort is spent differentiating details.

If we apply the cost of loss to living organisms, we see that each sub-variable can have massively high proportions. Each person will be highly unique due to their genetic variability, people's lifestyles guarantees that each person will house different histories of experiences, and each person has a drive to differentiate from others, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes out of an instinct to become irreplaceable. Each person will be very important to their own family due to kinship attachments from selfish genes, and if a person gains unique and useful skill-sets then their help can also become important to non-kin. People are highly sensitive to the possibility of being replaced, as when someone with similar skillsets gets hired.