“Token Prices Fell 98%. Developer AI Bills Rose 100×.” The piece calls it the Jevons Paradox arriving. Honest numbers, careful reporting. But one word is carrying the whole argument… “paradox”… and it’s the wrong one.
A paradox is when two things that can’t both be true appear to be. Nothing like that is happening here. Unit prices fell. The number of jobs worth handing a model exploded. So the total bill rose. That isn’t a contradiction. It’s cause and effect… demand responding to a cheaper input. Watt’s steam engines burned more coal for the same reason.
Calling it a paradox does something quietly harmful. It makes a leader feel tricked, and the reflex when you feel tricked is to slam on a spending cap. That’s the stop-sign instinct, and it’s the wrong move.
Reset the word and the real question surfaces. It was never “why is efficiency costing me more?” Efficiency is work per dollar, not dollars spent. The honest question is: am I getting more value per dollar than before, and do I have a meter on it?
Most teams can’t answer the second half. They watch the total bill because it’s the only number they have.
Monday: stand up one metric before you touch the budget. Cost per shipped unit of work… per merged pull request, per closed ticket. If that number is falling, the rising bill is efficiency doing its job. If it’s flat, you’ve just found the real problem.
Source: Token Prices Fell 98%. Developer AI Bills Rose 100×. The Jevons Paradox Has Arrived.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.
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