Saying that something involves excessive sacrifice implies that you already know what the right answer is: it makes sense to speak of giving something up only against the background of some standard. But if you already have the standard (for example, that each person has a “natural right” to whatever he can make in the market) then the criticism to be made of other criteria should be that they happen to be incompatible with it. Nothing is added to this by talking about the “sacrifice” called for by utilitarian or other criteria.

Brian Barry, Theories of Justice, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 82-83