The common theme is that increasing available resources invites hungry entities to come out of the woodwork and eat the surplus, so you don’t get the benefit you bargained for. Is there an accepted name for this phenomenon? Is it studied?
“Rent dissipation is defined as the total expenditure of resources by all agents attempting to capture a rent or prize.” It’s an interesting concept, but seems to be slightly different from what I meant. In the situations above, wolves eat your surplus without spending much resources.
In that case it’s a related topic called “rent seeking”, I think. The second paper I linked above talks about how simple models of rent seeking predict total rent dissipation, but the paper wants to challenge that.
This seems to fall under “rent dissipation”. Here’s a representative paper. ETA: Another one.
“Rent dissipation is defined as the total expenditure of resources by all agents attempting to capture a rent or prize.” It’s an interesting concept, but seems to be slightly different from what I meant. In the situations above, wolves eat your surplus without spending much resources.
In that case it’s a related topic called “rent seeking”, I think. The second paper I linked above talks about how simple models of rent seeking predict total rent dissipation, but the paper wants to challenge that.
The Jevons paradox and rebound effect) articles are more like what I had in mind, but still a little different.