[j_w]

Cheaper software: where is this cheaper software? Most users don't pay for most software. Facebook/Instagram are introducing paid plans now. LLM companies are seemingly starting to increase prices.

Unlimited cloud storage: Where are consumers getting unlimited cloud storage from? I'm not aware of AWS/Google/others reducing prices/providing unlimited plans.

[fintechjock]

> Cheaper software

Software prices are down 73% since 2000: https://x.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/2015463505298878746

> Nearly unlimited cloud storage

$9 / month for 2tb of cloud storage is a pretty sweet deal for anyone. And unfathomable if you travelled back in time before data centers were scaled.

Data centers are a net good for all consumers. Pretty significantly!

[j_w]

Oh stop. Both of those are a bit ridiculous. We are talking about the sudden surge of data centers, the past 1-3 years, not the 20 prior to that.

Sourcing a tweet that doesn't have a real source (saying source: BLS without an actual reference to BLS isn't a source) is worthless.

Consumers don't buy software, they buy services. Whether or not that is captured by your source in the "Computer Software" is unknown, since I don't have the source. FRED via BLS has PPI for software publishers going up in the last ~6 years, but that's not exactly analogous to consumer spend.

When you say 2tb for $9 is unfathomable if you travel back in time, yes obviously if you go back to floppy days it's comical. Cloud storage prices have been the same for a decade now (pre LLM boom).

So software may or may not be cheaper for consumers (hard to say, nobody buys software). And in real dollars cloud storage is cheaper because of inflation. Not sure what the significant gain is.

[fintechjock]

We can be respectful with this!

The tweet is from Mark Henry who updates that chart often. It’s cited pretty often. There is a bit about the methodology here: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-8...

My original list was just some brief examples, all of which I think hold up, but not nearly the entire list of data center benefits to all consumers. (One of those other benefits being the means to have this very conversation). There isn’t much of a way I can see to remove data centers from the technological progress we’ve benefited from over the last couple of decades.

[j_w]

> There isn’t much of a way I can see to remove data centers from the technological progress we’ve benefited from over the last couple of decades.

That's not really the argument.

The problem with the tweet is that the chart kind of sucks, and it isn't immediately obvious. The category cited is "Computer Software and Accessories" which is under "Information Technology, Commodities"

A more interesting category is "Video and Audio services," specifically the live streaming subcategory. People don't buy software anymore, they pay for subscriptions to services.

Here are links to FRED for both top levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERA . Unfortunately the granularity for the Information Technology index isn't available on FRED from what I could find.

So IT price index is down, frankly to a huge degree. But that includes hardware, so it's hard to draw conclusions about software pricing from that specific chart. But Video/Audio services have seen a fairly sizable increase in index in the last decade.

But that's not really very important. We are talking about price indexes, which do tell us roughly how expensive something is over time, but who cares about the price of basketballs unless that's something I plan on buying as a consumer? The BLS charts give a relative importance which we can use a proxy for "how much a price change would affect the consumer." The relative important of the IT category (linked) is 0.745, but the software subcategory is 0.029. Video/audio and live streaming are 0.595 and 0.185, respectively.

Consumers do not purchase software. Companies don't even bother trying to sell software to consumers. The chart linked is tracking a metric that doesn't matter, because it's not important to consumers.

Going back to the relative importance values from 1999 (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/cpi-detailed-report-58/a...) personal computers are at 0.106. No other categories. 2009 (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_05192010.pdf) is 0.248. 2012 (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_05152012.pdf) software is included with an importance of 0.048. At that point cable/television is at 1.387 (see Video/audio above).

So software prices don't matter. Consumers aren't spending on software. Service prices do matter, and they are getting more expensive.

This feels like a schizo post. Sorry for the complete lack of formatting.

[fintechjock]

I think your point on costs here is right. I was treating “computer software” as anything that consumers use: apps that provide a service for free in exchange for data, etc.

Very interesting, thanks!