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"In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand.[1]"

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

[Gibbon1]

See modern IRC clients that take 500MB of memory on the desktop. Compare with Orcad Capture a mid 90's schematic capture program that would run acceptably on a 486 with 16MB of memory.

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To be clear, the "efficiency with which a resource is used" in this case can be represented roughly by dollar per unit compute. As that value goes down, you would expect software "waste" to go up. That's how the Jevons Paradox applies here.