So, I had someone today tell me how ignorant I was for "not believing inflation exists" or something when I said I don't buy inflation arguments on why modern tech is so expensive. And I don't buy them. I believe way too many people who themselves are well off (upper middle class yuppie types with seemingly bottomless disposable incomes) like to make these arguments to justify higher prices, when in reality they're just justifying the higher prices to themselves and stroking their own egos. There's a real keeping up with the Joneses thing among those people and for them, being able to buy expensive products is a status symbol. Ya know, like being able to buy that overpriced designer clothing from the mall. A lot of these social circles have a real 'you're part of the in group" mentality if you can afford it, and if you can't well "what, are you poor?" It's a toxic mindset. But yeah these guys dominate online discussions and seem to love to be free market fundamentalists who love to justify why everyone should buy overpriced stuff and not complain about prices.
However, I don't buy into that mindset. First of all, I come from a poorer area of the country where those attitudes are less prevalent. Second, I'm autistic and don't give a crap about your stupid social norms. So for me, the whole exclusionary "if you poor boy just say so" arguments dont work on me. Yes, I'm "poor boy", now STFU and lower the prices you weirdo hypercapitalist bootlicker.
Anyway, before I begin, I want to say that I'm not arguing that inflation doesn't exist. It obviously does. However, I do think tech is generally an industry that probably shouldn't experience it much. I'll discuss why in my points itself. Let's start with that one.
1) Technology is often DEFLATIONARY
Technology often starts expensive and gets cheaper over time. The first TVs cost thousands of dollars in today's money, had poor picture, and were black and white. Now I can go to any department store and walk out with a decent sized LCD one for under $100.
GPUs used to start out expensive, but they'd get cheaper fast. A $500 GPU one year would be replace by a midrange $250 one the next, and the next, it's a $100 entry level one. That used to be a thing for a while.
Consoles also used to start out expensive. I admit, a $300-400 MSRP isnt uncommon for a console in today's money, but after a year or two, you'd be able to get it far cheaper. Games used to drop in price too. I used to buy most of my games second hand at deep discounts back in the 90s and early 2000s. This stuff DEPRECIATED IN VALUE. And it happened fast.
This isn't happening any more. The switch 1 cost $300 in 2017 and $300 in 2025. And now the switch 2 is $450. GPUs are stagnating and not dropping in price a ton either. Something like a 6600 should be like entry level right now, and I dont mean entry level at $200. I mean entry level at like $100. It's 2 generations old. And things used to progress so fast that it would get down to entry level FAST. A 4 year old card that was $300 on day 1 should be sub $100 within a few years. We discussed this with the game cube too. That started out at $200, went down to $100. Old games would drop in price. A game that's like 4 years old eventually would be available in a bargain bin for like $8. It doesnt matter if it launched at $50, 60, even 70. Again, games dropped in price HARD. And quite frankly, it was cartridges that made the cost so high in the first place. That's why games went DOWN to $50 in gen 6.
I'm not saying there isnt going to inevitably be a nominal amount of inflation that happens regardless, but that happens slow and is relatively modest. Which brings me to the next point.
2) The inflation timeline doesnt make sense
So, we all know that in 2021-2023 we had a rather large inflationary wave. However, with GPUs, Nvidia raised their prices as early as 2018 with the 2000 series. Overnight, all tiers of products got bumped up an entire price tier wise. 60 cards costs what 70 cards used to cost. 70 cards cost what 80 cads used to cost. 80 cards cost what 80 ti/90 cards used to cost, and 80 ti cards cost what TITANS used to cost. Nvidia did that. Why? Because they could. They had the market share. They had the new tech. They could get away with it. Nvidia has always been like this. They tried this in 2008-2009 with the GTX 200 series. Then AMD came back swinging with the 4000/5000 series at the time and corrected the market.
Let's face it. Most of the current inflation is NOT necessary. It's NOT justified. With GPUs its even worse, as we saw, not only are we getting inflation in price tiers, we're getting SHRINKFLATION too.
Compare to the CPU market. The CPU market had something similar happen in 2011-2017. Except it wasn't actually inflation, but shrinkflation. INtel had dominance. AMD collapsed after they released bulldozer and stopped making CPUs and intel just kept releasing quad cores every year while continuing to reduce the die size. Still, CPUs remained cheap. Even after AMD came back with ryzen and things progressed again, and even as CPU prices did rise a bit, they didnt rise like GPU prices did. And they still offer cheap options. If you wanted to, you can get like a Ryzen 5600 for like $130 today, or a 12100f or even 12400f for like $100. Compare this to GPUs. Here, we see the prices bumped up a whole tier compared to what they used to be, and THEN they shrinkflation things ANOTHER tier. And then the entire low end market is decimated as they stop releasing true entry level gpus. So the entire budget market is destroyed. $200 is the bare minimum for entry, and then games require those $200 GPUs just to run.
It's broken. And this is all corporate greed. Nvidia is doing this because they can.
Now, let's talk about the switch 2 too. Their previous handheld was $300, now its STILL $300, and their NEW ONE is $450. Their 2017 launch games are STILL $60, and their new ones are $80. That's a nintendo problem.
And on the switch 2, "but but, its a solid value for the price". Yeah, but wanna know why? Instead of making a true handheld, they made a STEAM DECK. They made a large, overpowered, oversized handheld with limited portability and a high price tag. Nintendo never did that in the past. They made cheaper hardware that was more portable and accessible to the masses. People act like they HAD to make a $450 handheld. No...just like they took the nvidia shield at the time, which was, btw, a $300 gaming tablet tablet back in the day, and turned it into a $300 console, they could've looked at the mobile market again and based their own successor on say, a retroid pocket 5, or razer edge, or odin 2. The fact that they decided, for the first time in 20 years, to compete with the bigger beefier consoles is THEIR decision. They didnt HAVE to make it like that. But you know what? This is what they're doing. And this is what nvidia is doing too. They're conditioning consumers with being okay with paying more for things. And you people are actually defending them for it. They're screwing you, and you're trying to gaslight me into thinking this is necessary.
"But but moores law is slowing down, we have to make stuff more expensive." N you dont. You could just shrinkflation things like intel did in 2011-2017 and stagnate a bit. Do what progress you can for the price, but also keep the price down. People are CHOOSING to go all out. Same with software developers. Its okay if games dont progress graphically at the same rate as they did in the past. Really. It stopped mattering to me half way through gen 8. Youre never ever going to have another N64 moment again where graphical improvements are so groundbreaking that it revolutionizes gaming. And that's okay. It's a mature technology. If we cant keep progressing forever due to hardware limitations, that's okay. I'd rather have longer lasting console gens and longer lasting hardware at this point. It's better on the pocketbook. What i find unreasonable is asking consumers to pay more for stuff because you decided on a business model that quite frankly isnt sustainable and is exclusionary to your more budget oriented customers.
3) Most 2020s inflation is greed anyway
Heres the big reason im dismissive of inflation arguments in the 2020s. Most inflation isn't legit inflation. As in, it's not due to rising costs. Historically, most inflation in the past was due to supply chain issues or labor costs. 2020s inflation was what we call "greedflation" where companies just decided to all raise their prices post covid to see what they could get away with. So...it's greed. They raise prices then suddenly their profits are higher than ever. It aint going to wages. At least then it would be evening out. Instead, workers and customers are being squeezed for more money, and they're not seeing more money to some extent. Admittedly wages are a bit higher now than they were pre covid, but still. Data is data. We discussed this before on this blog. Again, it's greedflation. So...stop giving corporations a free pass?
What I really hate are people who just act like "well you SHOULD be okay with paying more?" Screw off. I'm NOT. And no sane person should be. The reason most of the current inflation is happening is because market forces are stacked in favor of the sellers and they're just raising prices and pushing to see what they can get away with. And they're getting away with it. because you people are stupid and letting them get away with it. Rather than calling stuff out, youre just being annoying contrarians like "well ackshully you SHOULD be okay with spending more" and making weird comparisons like what video games cost in the 90s to justify your decisions.
But...as an educated consumer who understands what's going on. I dont buy it. I'm sorry. I dont believe that gaming has to be so expensive in the 2020s. it is so because we live in an oligopoly that strays into being a full on MONOpoly at times. Nintendo is able to get away with their stuff because IP laws give them exclusivity copy right wise over their franchises and you cant buy them elsewhere. Nvidia can get away with stuff because they have 90% of the GPU market share. What are you gonna do, say no? They know youre not gonna say no, and they're betting youre not gonna say no. And when you dont say no, youre proving them right. So congrats on raising the prices of goods for everyone and pricing people like me out of the market by having no impulse control and then mindlessly defending this stuff on the internet. Youre ruining it for everyone. Sorry. Not sorry.
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