Concept
Rebound Effect
SustainabilityClimateAI
Every unit of efficiency saving is refilled by new demand and new capacity.
Saved resources do not quietly disappear into nature or a warehouse; they turn into capital that finances the next gear of the capitalist growth engine. The micro-mechanism beneath Jevons Paradox: per-unit cost falls, new uses open, populations that did not previously demand the resource are pulled in, and total consumption overruns the saving that efficiency produced.
Essays that develop this concept
Related concepts
- Algorithmic SurrenderThe quiet, voluntary handover of decision to the machine in the name of convenience.
- Decoupling ThesisThe claim that economic growth can be decoupled from resource consumption.
- Attention MiningAn industry in which human attention is extracted and depleted like a natural resource.
- Epistemic WeaponisationAn information strategy targeting the status of truth, not its content.