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This isn’t a new idea. In 1865 the economist William Stanley Jevons pointed out that increasing the efficiency of machines that burned coal would lead to more c
by nindalf 3y ago
This isn’t a new idea. In 1865 the economist William Stanley Jevons pointed out that increasing the efficiency of machines that burned coal would lead to more coal being burned, not less.
Making something more efficient makes it cheaper, unlocking new use cases and consumption by people who couldn’t afford it earlier. That’s what we call Jevons’ Paradox.
Jevons was worried that the UK would run out of coal entirely. This question, asked in 1865, is similar to the 20th century worry of Peak Oil.
> Are we wise in allowing the commerce of this country to rise beyond the point at which we can long maintain it?
Jevons, William Stanley. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines. Macmillan and Co., 1865.
- vxNsr 3y agoEven that wasn’t the first time introducing efficiency had the opposite intended effect: the cotton gin was invented to reduce the reliance on slavery, it of course famously had the opposite effect, increasing demand for slavery as cotton became even more profitable.
- nindalf 3y agoIt wasn’t the first time it happened or noticed, but it’s the first time we know of that someone wrote a paper about it. The Gutenberg press in the 14th century could have saved a lot of time spent copying books by hand. It did, but also triggered a Cambrian explosion of book publishing.
- vxNsr 3y agoBut more books was the intended effect of the Gutenberg press, we were discussing unintended consequences.
- relativ575 3y agoWas it? Or did they only intend to save the time it needed to make more books?
- pkage 3y agoThis is also the case in software, improvements in hardware performance simply cause software to consume more resources, and not meaningfully increase the overall productive capability of a system.
- nindalf 3y agoYeah, Google making searches faster in the 2000s meant they need more data centers, not fewer.