So, this is an idea I've been sketching out in my other project, and I kind of wanted to do a free article here on it, since I think it's an important concept. And that is the limitations of growth. As you know, balancing growth with other priorities is the third pillar of my own iteration of "human centered capitalism." And this doesn't mean I'm anti growth per se, but I am skeptical of the "growth at all costs" narrative.
Economically, the argument is simple. Growth comes with tradeoffs. We have this phrase in our capitalist societies: "time is money." I don't like this phrase, because it assumes that the default, that the norm, is we should want to trade hours of our life for money. We should try to use our time purely from a profit pursuing perspective, and think about how to maximize our output for our time. In moderation this isn't bad. Efficiency is good. But at the end of the day, as I always say with growth, we have a choice when it happens, we can either output the same amount of stuff with less effort, or output more stuff with the same effort. Capitalism creates an environment that pressures people to be working all of the time to continually maximize output. it doesn't matter how much output we achieve, it's never enough, we need to keep focusing on MORE growth, or the NEXT thing. With me, growing up, my work ethic was always built around efficiently using my time, so I could have more of it, to do what I always wanted to do. I wasn't "lazy" per say, but I didn't have the slavish work ethic our society encourages. I was the kind of person who wanted to get done with my work, and do it well so I would be rewarded for it, but then to go off and do my own thing. I didn't want more work, more responsibility. I kinda did wanna do the bare minimum, but I also wanted to do it well enough, if that makes sense. Like, A was an A student, I was rewarded for getting As, and punished if I did poorly in school. I would do well enough to get rewards, without getting punished, and then I would maximize the time I had left to enjoy said rewards. Sounds simple, right?
But capitalism doesn't actually reward efficient workers. It punishes them by giving them more work. If you do 40 hours of work in 20 hours, the solution of the capitalists is "oh cool, heres 20 more hours of work to do!" As such, capitalism actually does, to some extent, encourage inefficiency. it encourages procrastination. Pretending to be busy when not really busy. Because our society is more fixated on ensuring you suffer for the correct number of hours, than achieving the desired output.
Of course, the result of this is also growth. As people continue to put in the same number of hours, output goes up over time. That person who now has twice as much work to do does twice as much, and living standards increase as a result. But here's the question: should we be living this way? I would argue no. At the core of my "efficient worker" work ethic is the mentality that for every hour spent doing work, I can be doing something else. I get my work done, so i dont have to do any more. When I do have to do more, it just makes me wanna give the frick up. Because I dont wanna actually be working. I understand some work is necessary and HAS to be done, but i dont like this society's slavish work ethic where we show how many hours we worked and how much we suffered and sacrificed as a badge of honor. I dont like the protestant work ethic and I kind of resent it.
Again, if anything, instead of a work ethic, I have a play ethic. Every hour of work is wasted, and what I really wanna be doing is NOT working, so I basically try to work efficiently so I don't have to do more. And honestly, I would rather just do what I have to do and be left alone, than have to work more and not have any time to actually enjoy the fruits of the labor.And this is why modern society and its work ethic is sisyphusian hell to me. I think we should be striving to work less as technology frees us from labor, but our institutions keep us working the same amount as living standards go up.
And this isn't even just not good for humans, it's terrible for the environment. Our tendency toward infinite growth is trashing the planet. We're using natural resources faster than we can replace them, we're leaving future generations literal islands of garbage in the middle of the ocean, and we're warming the planet in a way that is changing the climate and probably leaving us worse off in the future. I think that future generations, like say, around 2100, 2200, are gonna look back at us around the year 2000 give or take and be like WTF WAS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS?! Seriously, because of our gluttonous habits, they're gonna have a harder time in the future, as we leave them a polluted planet with a crazy climate, and ironically, they're gonna have to work harder and struggle due to the natural limits of scarcity associated with overuse in this era where they're gonna WISH that we all decided to work less.
Like really, I wouldnt call myself like a "degrowther", but I have noticed the link between my growth narrative skepticism and how it could save us from this growing environmental crisis of this era. And I do think that long term, it is going to have to be THE solution. It's the only way to voluntarily rein this stuff in.
Anyway, with that said, I've also noticed the same issues with video games and hardware lately. I keep saying it, the problems with "generation 9" in gaming is the issue of "peak gaming". Kinda like "peak oil" and the looming environmental crises that will be affecting us in the future, we're starting to feel those effects in gaming. Generation 9 is really the straw breaking the camel's back. In the early days, consoles were affordable. And they provides massive jumps in performance for not a lot of money. These days, moore's law is breaking down and in order to maintain the same rate of progress we always have, stuff is getting more expensive. So now we're pushing people to buy these more expensive nvidia cards and the like for ray tracing and stuff. It's crazy. Like, inflation happens in economics but it happens in gaming too. What is the point of progress when any technological gains from a hardware perspective are met with the software becoming more bloated and demanding to the point that it cancels out the gains.
Like, the people making AAA games for consoles are still living in some reality of the past that sub 1080p and sub 60 FPS are somehow enjoyable gameplay experiences. They're not. originally, these 9th gen consoles were sold as 4k 120 FPS machines and the like, we're gonna make games be higher fidelity resolution wise, and we're gonna make them run faster. Which is fine by me as Im fine at 1080p/60 FPS. But now it's like, nope, let's take ALL of that power and make these monstrously demanding games.
And honestly, I dont think the graphical transition from gen 8 to gen 9 has been that impressive. Especially since gen 8 already had a bit of a resolution and FPS upgrade with the mid gen refreshes. But yeah. Games are becoming more demanding, the hardware isnt there, the hardware is expensive. Games take longer to make, they're buggy at launch. And honestly, there's just diminishing returns.
As far as I'm concerned, it is perfectly acceptable for us to admit that we're past some sort of realistic peak here. I think it's perfectly fine to admit that stuff is gonna slow down from here on out. We could, with all the progress we're making, go in a different direction. We could make games higher fidelity in terms of resolution. We can improve their framerates. And trust me as a PC gamer, thats what a lot of us prefer. The 4k crowd who uses 4090s is actually a minority. Most of us are playing gen 8 games and esports on like 3060s and 6 core processors. We dont need the best of the best. if anything, much of nvidia's new tech is just making our gaming experience worse, since tech like frame gen and DLSS and ray tracing are just replacing traditional rendering and it's just not as good. Sure, shadows look more realistic. Cool. But our frame rates are crap, our games are blurry messes, and we're spending 1.5-2x on GPUs compared to a decade ago (or we're functionally going down a tier to maintain the same price).
And dont get me wrong, I'd be fine with the tech stagnating...as long as games were made for that tech. but they're not. This mentality of growth makes us have to constantly upgrade, to conform to the system, and we're spending more when we do upgrade. I dont like this weird feeling common in capitalist growth oriented societies where we constantly need to be with the current thing and if we're not with current thing, we're gonna be left behind. And then the software ends up chasing current thing where if you arent on current thing, you really DO get left behind as new games flat out wont run on older hardware.
What I'm saying is I'd rather have games that look a little worse, but run on lower end hardware. I'd rather see the prices of hardware go down before we adopt new tech. I know the whales who spend like $5000 on their PCs will scream bloody murder over that, but they're also the people in the economy who are the most well off under capitalism and just expect the average joe to cater to their whims at any moment. Ya know? Like, we got a problem where we let the top 20% of people dictate things for the bottom 80%, and then the bottom 80% is just expect to keep running trying to keep up. It's ridiculous.
Honestly, I don't care if games are stuck on gen 8 graphics for the next decade at this point. I'd rather just bring the price of hardware down to pre inflation levels and THEN start growing again.
You know, back in the day, we used to have new consoles every 5 years, and on PC there's be a corresponding system requirements jump. They extended the life of gen 7 in part due to the diminishing returns thing, arguably, but also because of the recession. if they replaced the consoles in 2010, no one would buy them, because no one could afford them. So they waited until 2013. We then replaced those consoles in 2020 during COVID. PC hardware was even more affordable than it was today due to insane demand for GPUs. Like, we actually regressed to 2013 price/performance for a while with even a GTX 1050 ti being $400 or something crazy. And we decided, during that crapshow, to just release a new generation of consoles. The PS5 was unaffordable for many, it was scalper prices, like $800-1000 a year. Like $500 for a console is already a lot. That's a big investment. But then it was 60-100% more than that due to scalping, and then it took years for the price to come down, and quite frankly, since 2022, the price of hardware seems...stagnant. Even in early 2025, the price of GPUs is what it was when the market finally corrected in late 2022-2023. Which is why this generation feels so short. Most of us couldnt even afford a PS5 for the first several years of its life cycle. Nor could we afford a PC comparable for one. We're just now at a point when a PC gamer can affordably replicate a PS5 style experience at reasonable prices and we're like 4 years into this new console generation. It's insane. With the gen 8 consoles, we were at PS4 Pro/Xbox one X time, and you could get a GPU for PC that could accomplish that quality level for $250. You could accomplish base level performance around $100. That doesn't exist any more. And then people wonder why I'm pissed.
Again, it's fine if growth slows down so people can catch up. I'm tired of this weird darwinistic growth at all costs mindset we have in society where life is a massive struggle just to keep up with newest thing. It's fine to slow down if we're getting to the point of the ketchup bottle where we gotta hit it a few times before the ketchup comes out. No need to keep shoehorning more growth is that growth comes with higher costs. Because that just leaves people behind. But then again, the people at the top don't care, sink or swim is their attitude.
Again, growth isn't bad. It's not bad in economics. It's not bad in technology. It's this mentality where we expect people to conform to systems, rather than having the systems meet people where they are. And that's the point of human centered capitalism. The economy exists for people, people don't exist for the economy. Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Growth should be balanced with other priorities like leisure, the environment, human well being, etc. Instead of viewing growth as a sole metric of well being, it should merely be seen as something to enhance it, you know?
It's okay to slow down and smell the roses once in a while. Honestly, if it were up to me, gen 9 would last until like 2030. We dont need new stuff before then. I certainly aint ready for a massive system requirements bump in 2027-2028. It's already 2025 and I already just upgraded 1-2 years ago. I'm ready to just sit and chill for a while. This stuff is expensive. This gen barely has any games worth playing and people are already talking about the NEXT generation. I don't care. As a PC gamer, everything from gen 7 on has just been one massive generation anyway. All we see are buggy games and increased system requirements while games from 2-3 years prior look just as good and run at 80 FPS. Im just now getting to the point I realize how dated gen 7 games truly are now. Gen 8 was just more gen 7 until halfway through it turned into gen 9 in a sense. Really, I keep saying it, but the world changed in 2016. It changed politically, it changed culturally, and the gaming aspect changed too, and it's never had the magic that the world had prior to that point since. And I miss the old world and think the new world sucks.
And thats where people end up being. Despite all of this growth, most people get older and then want things to be like they were when they were like 20 years old. Ya know? Maybe newer isn't always better. Just something to think about.
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