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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Views on government
  • Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:16:50 -0500


On Jun 11, 2008, at 11:39 AM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

What's it called ... thinking .... the Jeavons Paradox. As something becomes
more efficient, we tend to use MORE of it rather than less. Gas being a good
example. As gas mileage went up, rather than entering a long age of cheap
transportation, we bought more cars and drove them longer distances.

One rarely escapes the paradox. If 'competent' people had prosecuted the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with far less waste, history and human nature show
we would have waged MORE war, not less. </HTML>

This is at Wikipedia:

"In his 1865 book The Coal Question, Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Wattintroduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued that increased efficiency in the use of coal would tend to increase the use of coal, and would not reduce the rate at which England's deposits of coal were being depleted."

It is a nice premise. In the 143 years since Jevons made his argument the economic world has changed. Even supply and demand has become artificially manipulated. Take government and power brokers out the of equation and he might still be accurate. But not as things are now.

And while it might still have an effect in commodities trading it is a stretch to apply his theory to human management efficiency. Myriad highly successful companies today became thus by becoming more efficient than their competitors.





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