Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mlthoughts2018 2402 days ago
Isn’t this just Jevons Paradox applied to driving?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

2 comments

This reminds me of how my own behavior changed when Amazon Locker arrived. I could order what I wanted, and have it delivered up the street without having it stolen off of my porch!

Now I'll order something off Amazon, then 30 minutes later think of something else I need, then 10 minutes after that get another item, and then I've got 3 separate shipments taking up 3 spaces in the lockers, because to me there's no cost to the lack of planning.

When Amazon tells me the lockers are full, I become furious.

I've had Amazon combine separate orders into a single box.

If your orders are really 30 and 10 minutes apart, Amazon will ship them together if it can.

That's weird, I don't think I've ever seen that happen. I'm constantly having multiple doors pop open at the locker.

Although maybe it's possible they do it some of the time and I'm actually much worse about fragmenting my orders than I think :)

Or the Lewis–Mogridge Position[0] which is that "traffic expands to meet the available road space", i.e. building more roads (thinking it will improve traffic congestion) usually ends up making the traffic congestion worse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%E2%80%93Mogridge_Positio...