Reverse Jevons Paradox

Jevons Paradox is called a paradox because it is non-intuitive. It is very intuitive to conclude that when costs go up, people will use less of that thing.

> Jevons paradox happens when the cost of a resource goes down, but the total spend on that resource goes up.

I would argue that is not Jevons paradox but standard supply and demand (and this "reverse Jevons paradox" too). Jevons paradox occurs when a more efficient use of a resource leads to an increase in its use (instead of a decrease as a first order analysis would suggest).

> you might effectively kill a whole class of changes, like "small refactor" PRs.

Or the changes might be "smuggled through" in an unrelated changeset that has to go through the red tape anyway.

> If you make it hard to change code by requiring multiple levels of reviews, a web of Jira tickets, a horde of people needing to sign off, and other red tape, you might effectively kill a whole class of changes

I remember this theater on things which were suspected to be too expensive with insiffiufficient ROI to implement, except that all the time wasted by multiple people arguing in Jira tickets, sitting in meetings, and writing specifications was likely far more expensive than just building and testing the thing.

For some reason, there seems to be a strong and automatic tendency for older and larger organizations to drift toward petrification through bureaucratization.

The author has discovered the red tape.

> if the cost of a resource goes up, the total spend on that resource can go down.

Not unlike hiking taxes on the rich, seeing them vote with their feet, and revenue subsequently catering.

But as long as we reward politicians for delivering blame more than results, this political folly will continue.

Until Strein's Law[1] kicks the teeth in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Stein's_Law

Now that I think about it, it's very easy to point to reverse jevon's paradoxes. Regulations around building housing, large org bloat + processes, when the stupid form fill that i need to fill out gets too long on some website...

Or also called bureaucracy

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