Do we really have things so much better now...?

 

 

You may have noticed that I'm a grumpy sort of person - easily annoyed into rolling my eyes and huffing when things are done which rub me the wrong way. You might even have seen a few tweets of mine on certain "trigger" topics, such as "inflation affecting the pricing of high technology products"*. Well, welcome to a new entry on that list: "modern buyers have it better".

On the face of it, this is a basic truism (or at least we hope so!) but on the other side of the coin, this is, in my opinion, a bad faith argument.  

 

Let's get into why I think that...

*It has negligible effect on the overall consumer price for high technology products. The forces which make a loaf of bread more expensive do NOT act on how much it costs to produce all the components and package a CPU/GPU... They are primarily priced based on COGS and how much the market will bear...

 

 

Of Loaves and Fish...

Face it, most people you could speak to today will concede that some or many aspects of our daily lives are worse than they used to be in some manner. Whether that's cost of living, political authoritarianism, autonomy, threat of war, discrimination, etc. However, what the majority of people are doing in those instances of conversation is compariing their own historical knowledge to the current landscape. No one is doing a broad analysis with detailed, in-depth studies regarding various factors from "the past" to "now". It's all first-hand knowledge and experience. 

So, why do people who want to argue against a broad consumer/cohort sentiment go into hyper-specific detail? 

Often (as you can see in the video above) people making these counter-arguments, will focus on very specific items but then ignore the broader context around them. LTT's video is only partially guilty of this, in that they specifically present claims and then sort of undermine them later on, only - you can't separate these things out, this is not an academic paper. You can't (read: shouldn't) say for five minutes that tech has gotten cheaper than ever for the level of new performance* and then switch to talking about how your previous point didn't make any sense in the broader economic context. The topics are inextricably linked!

If a later point in your very short discussion invalidates a previous point, DON'T make the point in the first place! These are not ad hoc conversations, this is a scripted article**.

*We'll get onto that in a minute...

**I'm probably guity of violating this, myself! Though usually in the pursuit of dramatic effect. Not so with the presentational/informative style of the LTT video.

Speaking, generally, about how things are better than they were in the long-ago past when things were expensive is an irrelevant, bad faith argument.

It's an extrapolation of circumstances which have very different forcings acting upon them for which no extrapolation can be made. They are two different, unrelated pictures...

Let me give a couple of examples:

Example 1: Books/paper

In the 1500s, it took a couple to several pounds currency to produce a book - bear in mind that this is after the invention of the printing press. Using a handy conversion website I found, 5 pounds in 1500 is approximately £3,329 in 2017. Just before this period, it could be calculated that lower class people would take a couple of years worth of salary to afford the cost of a book (not saying they did, just grounding the relative cost to cost of living). A single page in this era could cost around a penny, with a day's work paying 4 pennies - so a quarter of a day's wages for a lowish level person in society (my calculations thus put this around £30 - 40, today).

By the 1800s, books had decreased in cost to purchase to around 3 shillings and sixpence, which is approximately £10.35 in 2017.

However, if we compare the price of a book in 2026 with that, the price of, let's say a book* that aligns with the historical contexts of the prior prices we just discussed for the 16th and 19th centuries costs around £12 - 13 - a slight increase for hardbacks with paperbacks (which, I suppose, didn't really exist in the far flung past due to crude binding techniques) being around £8 - 9.

*Historically, proper books were less for entertainment than the vast majority of scripts are today. So, I'm comparing the approximate averaged price of an informative book on Amazon UK based on a quick look. i.e. not a cheap fiction novella you read on the plane to your holiday. ;)

Of course, between 2017 and 2025 there isn't any technological gap to drive costs down, so we're looking at the end-point of costs being more strongly affected by:

1. Consumption (thus economies of scale) and;
2. Raw material and shipping costs.

If you want to take a look at technological innovation, then we need to consider e-books which, in reality should not be compared due to the cost of the devices required to view them and the inconsistent, entirely divorced from cost to produce pricing structures that subscriptions and loss-leaders have introduced into the publishing ecosystem.

So, what are we to conclude from this?

From my perspective, the method of production, the materials and ecosystems around production and the markets for these products have changed so substantially throughout these three periods that there is no comparison between them that could result in conclusions of any real value.

• Is it cheaper to buy books now? Yes. 
• Are they a large proportion of the median person's daily wage? Not really. 
• Do people still consume books in the same fashion between the three eras? Not on your Nelly!
• Are the production costs and difficulties of production the same between the periods? No!

It's pointless to directly compare the periods that were quickly referenced above on this topic because nothing stayed the same.

However, one item in this example is not really comparable with the modern electronic technology sphere that we are discussing - the products are vastly different in both quality and capability between the start of consumer production in the 70s / 80s, the middle (90s / 00s) and today.

A book is a book. It may look a little nicer or worse for wear, from time to time, article to article. However, it is still printed words on paper for 90+% of the times we are talking about "a book".

So, let's take a more technological industrial example. 

Example 2: Lightbulbs/light fixtures

The early inventions of the incandescent light were fast and furious and I won't cover those here but let's skip past the very early years of Swan and Edison (when the price of a bulb could cost around a day's work) to the early 1900s. A bulb could cost around 2 shillings and sixpence, which is £9.77 in 2017 and lasted around 1200 - 1500 hours.

By 2000, the price of an incandescent bulb was £1 (£1.42 in 2017), with the efficiency and quality greatly increased - lasting for up to 2000 hours. Additionally, the options available to the consumer had proliferated and various types and colours of lightbulbs could be obtained for different purposes. More expensive versions of the lightbulb were available from the 1980 when compact flourescent (CFL) bulbs were commercially available for around £25 - 35 (£203 - 284 in 2017) and this had reduced to between £2 - 6 (£2.84 - 8.53 in 2017) with lifespans of 6,000 - 15,000 hours.

Over the first decade of the 21st century, we saw the gradual introduction of LED lights with the first proper "bulb replacement" introduced over 2009 - 2010 for around £30 - 50 (£34.68 - 57.79 in 2017).

Now, in 2025, virtually all lightbulbs are LED-based techology, costing around £1.74 - 2.74 with lifespans of 25,000 - 50,000 hours... and the variety and options of lightbulbs has exploded in the years since 2010 - the price is still decreasing even while more expensive options (wifi control? colour change?) are introduced!

So, what can we conclude from this?

Again, from my perspective, we don't have much to conclude except that things got better over time, prices generally dropped, despite several HUGE technology changes over the years.

• Is it cheaper to buy lightbulbs now? Yes, with a caveat of total cost of ownership massively decreased compared to the purchase price being marginally cheaper per item in the past.
• Are lightbulbs in as large a commercial demand as they historically were? No, I would say that they are in more demand as time progresses. We're stuffing LEDs into everything!
• Are the manufacturing processes equivalent between the different periods? Not even close!
• Does the purchase cost relate to "inflation" or "COGS and shipping"? The latter, by a large margin!!

Look, I hope these examples are giving you at least a hint of where I'm headed in my arguments. Once again, it's pointless to compare what is being bought and used, despite ostensibly being the same product.

A lightbulb is still a lightbulb - everything still "works" pretty much the same, only with exponentially less energy, for an exponentially longer lifespan of the product. Just from personal experience, I think the last time I changed a bulb was 3 years ago and that was 5 years after buying it (the other bulbs in the same fixture are still going, so it must have just been a bad bulb!)... Back in the day, your incandescent 60 W bulbs would last less time that that.

Let's get back on track:

Comparisons...

At 07:54 in the video they bring up a picture of two controllers, one in 2007 and one in 2025 (picture is the same for both but let's ignore that). The 2007 controller is $60 whilst the 2025 version is $65. The implication is that we're paying slightly more for the same product and it's below the rate of inflation while talking about the share of disposable income of modern day audiences being smaller. The last part being entirely true, the comparison doesn't hold up.

The Xbox 360 controller had a very cheap crappy d-pad, cheap but decent thumbsticks, simple digital buttons and analogue triggers. However, the most egreious omission is that the controller wasn't $60, it was $49.99.... Add to this fact that a modern $59.99 controller for the Xbox One has much higher quality components, improved ergonomics and improved wireless technologies. You can even go third party controller for the same or cheaper price and get hall effect joysticks and other advanced technologies like gyroscopic control. Back in 2007, the third party controllers were trash.

Nowadays? Third party controllers are both cheaper than official ones and actually probably better. As LTT themselves pointed out a year ago...

So, this comparison fall apart - they're comparing a product which has a brand effect on pricing, not on quality but even if they were fairly comparing, the quality of the modern controllers is much higher than the ones we were producing and using back in 2007.

No dice...

At 05:15, they talk about a comparison between a PC they built 11 years ago for 4K gaming and they claim that in "every single measure, modern buyers have it better...". They then proceed to compare this PC with one on PCPartPicker which they state is $1000 less (inflation adjusted - they forgot to add that!) and is "better in every conceivable way".

I don't actually know how to respond to this claim. No, wait. I do - that's why I'm writing this article using the pent up energy I've accumulated after all the times various entities and people claimed the past was better or that the present is better (being incorrect in both cases).

My initial gut response is, "What the hell do you expect? That technology hasn't advanced in 11+ years?!" It's just such an idiotically vapid claim. 

LinusTechTips - "I bought a PC today and it was betterer than in the past!!"

It actually grinds my gears that this made it into a video segment about comparison of quality of life.

But really, what have they compared here? The two items that they've put against each other aren't in the same category. It's like taking a Ferrari F355 and putting it against a Kia EV6... (well, not quite that big a difference but it's not far from a good anology. the F355 was peak racing tech for the 90s while the EV6 is just a normal electric drivetrain and the EV6 runs much more closely than perhaps it should to the supercar!

Let's do our own drag race:

Comparing apples to apples, we see a bit of a different story emerging... 

Feeding the 5000...

While I can't source all these components, I can do some theoretical assessments as well as a price assessment.

LTT's comparison isn't fair. They pitted a balls-to-the-wall PC from 2014, no expense spared, ultimate PC build to a fairly decent high end PC from 2025. That's not apples to apples! Above, you will see I've put together an "average" 2014 PC and also a true, ultimate 2025 PC...

What we see is that the ultimate gaming PCs are approximately the same cost (I didn't do much cherry-picking of components, I just searched for "best X of 2025" and got each of these results - though I did select the DDR5 6000 CL26 2x24GB as a) there's no point going above 6000, b) CL26 is the lowest we can get, and c) I've read that the 24GB sticks can overclock better/be more stable - let me know if I'm wrong about that!

Similarly, the pretty nice PCs from 2014 and 2025 are both around $2700 in today's money. That's a pretty big coincidence in both cases, no?!

Well, it turns out that, aside from the GPU, all other components have gotten cheaper! Who would have thunk it? Sure, these are all relatively high-spec components, even the "average but pretty nice" PCs, but we can see that these are all great price reductions...

But that's not the whole story, is it?

You see, the vast majority of people don't buy these components, they're buying cheaper and the above comparisons are using launch prices... The current price of these components is quite different. 

YES! 

If we compare that 2014 Ultimate 4K gaming PC with a 2025 version, we will see that we are paying 50% more for "ultimate" performance eleven years later... That's not a good conclusion... What that implies is that technological progress is still ongoing but that the consumer is not benefitting from it...

Yeah, those prices...

To quote LinusTechTips, "Sometimes, I think we get a little lost in the sauce when it comes to performance expectations"...

Only, there was no performance comparison performed? In fact, the relative performance of the systems in question is entirely overlooked. I mean, what even is this... I can't even...

What's shocking to me is that my "more reasonable" average 2025 PC is still pretty close in price to the good PC. There's only $1375 between the two and considering most of the 2014 PC's components launched the year before, (and new components were on their way in September), they were not as expensive as the launch price in the LTT video as we speculate in the above comparison (i.e. there was no Crypto/AI/etc. bubble occurring in 2014 that would push up prices!). In comparison, 2025's launch prices are the minima for pricing and today's prices are much worse... but, once again, mostly for RAM, SSD and GPU pricing.

So, YEAH, I understand that we shouldn't be "mad" and that things are the way they are but is this even normal? The skyrocketing prices of RAM and storage are one thing but in addition we have the over-inflation of consumer GPU tech, too. We just don't have the same level of investment by these companies that datacentre applications do, and that's fine, but the end result is that we're laden with the same price increases due to massive amounts of process and intentional architectural overlap which could be avoided. 

These companies have decided to save money by merging consumer and datacentre development into almost an individual stack and, when push came to shove, they rightly chose their more lucrative clients.

So, should we be "mad" at unfair business practices? Should we be "mad" at poor planning? Should we be "mad" at toxic politics and investments?

Yes, I think we should. And in this sense, LinusTechTips' video has failed on all counts. This video in particular is indirectly pandering to authority and minimising consumer experiences on a huge scale and you know what? I don't even blame them.

I can see the reasoning behind the video, I can understand the genesis of the idea: "People are angry, they shouldn't be SO uncontrollably angry and angry in an unfocussed manner. Let's make a video around that. You can still have good gaming experiences..."

But that's not this video.

This video is a "whitewashing" of computer hardware history and ignores today's trials and tribulations.

At best, it took too long in the pipeline... At worst, it was ill-conceived.

But let's try and do what LTT didn't:

Performance...

The issue is that, although hardware reviewing has greatly improved over the years, it was "abjectly terrible" back in 2014 and in 2025 it's merely "okay" (though thankfully begining to improve again!).

What can I compare between these types of PCs when 4K gaming wasn't even in the public consciousness back then?!

Long-running sites like TechPowerUp tested at a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 back in 2014 - a far cry from  the 3840x2160 pixels of 4K. So, how can we do this assessment?

Well, LTT provided some very simple metrics and we can try and extrapolate from those.

There's no arguing that 1080p was the defacto resolution of 2014 but 4K is still not the resolution of 2025. But, let's try. TechPowerUp has the RTX 5090 running at an average of 147 fps at native 4K resolution in modern games. The three games that were tested back in 2014 are no longer tested in any serious GPU testing suites but give an average of 55 fps.

So, what we're talking about is a 169 % increase in performance over 11 years at, essentially, the same price. Am I crazy or does that not seem excessive? That's only a 15 % performance increase per year which, given my own figures show a 190% increase over the period of 2014 to 2020, seems a pretty tame rate of advancement!

Accounting...

At the end of the day, from what I see in the video and from what I observe in the wider context of the world, the comparisons that LTT have brought together are both meaningless and midly condescending for the general public. Yes, they have a point - people shouldn't be so mad that tech prices have gone up. However, the actual reasons behind those price increases are infuriating.

Performing a proper analysis, as I have done here, shows that, no - we don't have it better than we did. An ultimate gaming PC in 2014 cost less than $5360 in today's money and a similarly conceptualised PC now costs around $8000 in today's market. 

This logic extends down the stack. If the price of an okay PC in 2014 costs the same as 2025 (launch to launch price) then in the current market, the same conceptual PC costs more, too. Unfortunately, since the three most affected components are RAM, storage and GPU - these are also usually the largest part of a budget for a min-spec PC, too. So, this goes all the way to the bottom... not just the super-spenders.

Paul of Paul's Hardware highlighted a passage that I've seen elsewhere but no idea where and I think it's relevant to the discussion:

"The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centres that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible..."

It's all just a big financial circle into hell which will come back to bite us, the consumer, in the ass when the bottom falls out...

And for that, we should be angry.