There is something counter-intuitive about the idea that making an engine that accomplishes the same amount of work with half the fuel will result in MORE fuel usage overall. You might expect it to be the same, or decline slightly, but the paradoxical element is that overall consumption goes up.
And you can say of course, it's so obvious, how could a dumdum not see that! But then there are lots of examples of things where increased efficiency results in less usage overall, because demand is inelastic, etc. Jevon's paradox doesn't apply to everything.
I don't think we know yet what is going to happen as software development gets much cheaper. If in ten years we can produce software 1000x more cost effectively, will we need fewer software engineers, the same, or more? Guess we'll see!
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There is something counter-intuitive about the idea that making an engine that accomplishes the same amount of work with half the fuel will result in MORE fuel usage overall. You might expect it to be the same, or decline slightly, but the paradoxical element is that overall consumption goes up.
And you can say of course, it's so obvious, how could a dumdum not see that! But then there are lots of examples of things where increased efficiency results in less usage overall, because demand is inelastic, etc. Jevon's paradox doesn't apply to everything.
I don't think we know yet what is going to happen as software development gets much cheaper. If in ten years we can produce software 1000x more cost effectively, will we need fewer software engineers, the same, or more? Guess we'll see!