A central purpose of economics is the study of how scarce resources are allocated. How raw materials are appropriated from nature and transformed into goods, how people organize to deliver services, how people and things come together to create new things for themselves and others. It is very much a study of inputs and outputs. When a particular output requires a minimum of inputs, this process is considered efficient. It means that, with the available technology and capital, the output could not be achieved with fewer inputs. But what happens when technology allows for greater efficiency? What happens when the input required to, say, operate a steam locomotive is drastically reduced? Your intuition may lead you to surmise that total consumption of that input would decrease, ceteris paribus (all other things being equal, that is). The truth of the matter is, it may not be that simple. In fact, that very opposite may be true, and to a very dangerous effect. At least that’s what William Stanley Jevons argued, and we are still talking about it more than a century and a half later.

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