I cannot fathom tbe mindspace that leads to this being anythning but a simple observation. It might even make it all the way to obscure trivia or interesting observation, but paradox? Certainly not.

If you make the thing more accessible, more people are going to use it. If it consumes a resource, the use of that resource will increase in relation to the increased adoption.

Hydrogen engines use hydrogen. Making hydrogen engines cheaper will increase adoption. Increased adoption will increase consumption of hydrogen.

Like, who'd have ever thought "oh wow, we've gotten to the point that people can have a computer in their own home, surely electricity use will plummet." or "oh wow, more than 50% of the population can now feasibly purchase an internal combustion engine, surely fuel demand will plummet."

In the original context they'd decreased the cost and complexity of steam engines. Anyone who'd seen the amount of money people were making with the old steam engines would be clearly incentivized now that they have the same economic opportunity available for less capital up front. Therefore more steam engines, therefore more fuel demand. Who in their right mind would really be surprised that resource consumption went up when people could and did build more machines?

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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