Re:Jevons Paradox
by nologic01 on Friday November 03, 2023 @12:06PM
(#38130759)
An important factor seems to be whether the underlying good or service is of the satiating variety [1] and how quickly does such satiation kick-in.
E.g. producing cheap and plentiful food will increase demand up to a point, but once everybody becomes obese that process stops (and mutates into waste).
If you can generate cheap and plentiful jetpacks, pretty soon the sky will be dark with swarms of human mosquitos criss-crossing the biosphere. But at some point people will have exhausted the time they want to dedicate to this activity.
On the other hand a generic useful good such as low entropy energy that can be repurposed for a wide variety of uses might actually never saturate. That is probably what happened with fossil fuels.
E.g. producing cheap and plentiful food will increase demand up to a point, but once everybody becomes obese that process stops (and mutates into waste).
If you can generate cheap and plentiful jetpacks, pretty soon the sky will be dark with swarms of human mosquitos criss-crossing the biosphere. But at some point people will have exhausted the time they want to dedicate to this activity.
On the other hand a generic useful good such as low entropy energy that can be repurposed for a wide variety of uses might actually never saturate. That is probably what happened with fossil fuels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_satiation