Jevons Paradox and AI Agents: Why More Automation May Mean More Developers

In 1865, the British economist William Stanley Jevons noticed something counterintuitive about the steam engine. As engineers made it dramatically more fuel-efficient, Britain did not consume less coal — it consumed vastly more. Cheaper energy per unit of work meant industrialists deployed steam everywhere they previously could not afford to. By 1900, British coal consumption had roughly tripled. Jevons called this the "rebound effect." Economists now call it the Jevons paradox: when efficiency...