Comment by paulryanrogers
9 hours ago
How far does it scale? Because I imagine there must be diminishing returns at some point. And even so, having a lot more renewable energy also means less cancer.
9 hours ago
How far does it scale? Because I imagine there must be diminishing returns at some point. And even so, having a lot more renewable energy also means less cancer.
Yes there are diminishing returns, but they're a long way from where you start.
Pre-industrial revolution most people in my country own enough clothing for everyday and then maybe some extra stuff for "best" appearance like church. Making a shirt requires hours of labour from skilled workers. The machines eliminate one of those jobs ("hand" weaving, using a loom that you operate at human scale, replaced by enormous machine looms which produce much more fabric and much faster with far less human labour) and streamline others so that the price of a garment collapses. So people buy a lot more garments. You probably own enough clothes that you can wear different clothes each day for at least a week, likely more, and you think nothing of it.
Most people won't buy so many clothes that they can't even wear items once, but many get pretty close, and so worldwide we produce hugely more clothing per person than before the textile mills were first built.
Really far.
The crux of Jevon's paradox is that you’re lowering the cost of revenue below the sale price.
If I can generate $10 a sale then I’ll do no sales if it costs me $11 . If gas drops from $4 to $2 then I’ll do as many sales as I can as $9 is less than $10.
I mean, right now, supposedly, we don't have enough energy to run as many AI data centers as everyone wants to build, and so big tech is getting into the power plant business to scale up: they'd love it if you stopped using energy they want to buy!