The Jevons Paradox is bullshit.

[joshcryer]

44. That's another good way to muddle the argument.

The standard of living return is much lower in the developing world thus Jevons is wrong because they haven't developed yet.

Except. Erm. They wouldn't be behind developmentally if technology was freely (or fairly) shared.

As it stands now the United States owns IP and is a service sector economy (on the global scheme).

Indeed, the abject failure of Rio+20 reflects this perfectly.

The basic point is that US development wouldn't have happened the way it did if we didn't rely on the developing world to develop slower and be our technological manufacturers! So their state is precisely because the way we moved forward technologically.

Note: I do, again, think Jevons is wrong, but not because of the reasons you state. I think he's wrong philosophically in a hypothetical universe where technology is freely (or fairly) shared. As opposed to the system that we have set up here. In this system I do agree with Jevons, that at least how growth happened happened the way he says. If you need an undeveloped nation to develop your nation via globalization, and then that nation starts developing, you will have not actually made efficiency gains. Indeed, had you actually developed all together, you'd have efficiency gains because we see the western lifestyle has lower population growth and therefore the unsustainable population we have to deal with now wouldn't have existed! But that's not how history went. So Jevons is right about this particular technological development path.