I had a Commodore 64 “computer” when I was a kid. I know I’m dating myself with that reference… but I’m telling you— back in the 80s, a Commodore was pretty hot stuff.
It was basically an antique typewriter that you plugged into a television (sort of like a Nintendo or other gaming console). And they called it a Commodore “64” because it had a whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM.
“Kilobytes” is not a typo. For context, most mobile phones today have 8 gigabytes of RAM, and a gigabyte is roughly 1 million times a kilobyte.
The average email today (without attachments) is nearly 100 kilobytes, i.e. 50% more than the entire memory of my Commodore. Yet, back in the 80s, software developers were able to do miraculous things with that tiny amount of memory.
64 kilobytes was somehow enough to play games like Pitfall and Impossible Mission, bang out a school report on a dot-matrix printer, and all sorts of other things.
And it wasn’t just Commodore— Nintendo and Sega put out hundreds of titles on consoles that had comparably tiny amounts of memory.
In order to make all of this magic happen, programmers had to be absolutely ruthless about every single line of code. Every byte mattered. There was zero bloat. Zero inefficiency.
And software teams routinely fought with each other about what features would be in a game, versus what features would be thrown out— because there simply wasn’t enough memory to include what everyone wanted.
In short, the software industry had to live within its means. Yet despite those severe memory limitations, they put out timeless classics. It was a Golden Age for software development.
But then something happened. Technological and manufacturing breakthroughs made memory abundant… and cheap. Whereas 64 kilobytes of memory was considered a luxury in the 80s, soon megabytes of RAM… and then gigabytes of RAM, became readily available.
Memory eventually became so abundant that it felt practically infinite. No one had to make any tough decisions to optimize their code for RAM limitations… because there was always more memory available.
As a result, bloat eventually crept in. Here are a few examples.
Literally right now as I write this, I have a number of tabs open in my browser (I use Brave, by the way). ProtonMail takes up 409 megabytes of RAM… for a single tab. And a web-based PowerPoint presentation in my browser takes up 957 megabytes of RAM!
And don’t get me started on Windows.
Microsoft has been rolling out a ‘feature’ to “pre-load” data in its File Explorer application that consumes 67.4 megabytes of RAM. That’s more than 1,000x the memory requirement as my Commodore 64 had… for the sole purpose of being able to look at files and folders on your computer.
The level of bloat and memory waste is absurd (and also why I use Linux).
There’s hardly anyone in the industry today who remembers the bygone days of having to make ruthless decisions over every line of code; rather, the software industry today is accustomed to being able to publish bloated code… because memory has been so abundant for so long.
Unfortunately conditions have now dramatically changed.
Thanks in large part to surging AI demand, there is now a global memory shortage. RAM supply is scarce and has skyrocketed in price.
The industry, quite predictably, is fretting over the supply side, complaining that memory manufacturers need to build new factories and produce more RAM.
Very few prominent voices in software are saying, “Gee guys, maybe we should be more efficient in our code and use less RAM. Maybe it shouldn’t take 67 megabytes to look at our system files… Or 400+ megabytes for a single browser tab.”
In other words, there’s very little push to be more efficient and live within their means.
If you’re starting to see where I’m going, this story should sound familiar… because it’s very similar to how the government spends our money.
Once upon a time in America, Congress fought passionately over every dollar. They knew they had to live within their means, and every budget item mattered. Politicians debated passionately about which programs stayed and which had to go.
But that was the past. America has been the world’s superpower, and the US dollar the world’s reserve currency, for eight decades.
Consequently, the US government has been able to run massive deficits and rack up a gargantuan national debt with impunity, leading politicians to believe that America’s financial resources are infinite.
Today there’s no one in government who remembers the days of responsible spending. That’s why there’s so much bloat and why deficits are so high.
But, just like the memory market, a sudden scarcity is emerging. Foreign creditors— who used to provide ample funds to the Treasury market— are starting to invest their capital elsewhere.
We can see this impact with interest rates, which are now hovering near multi-decade highs… as well as gold prices, which remain near all-time highs.
Faced with a sudden scarcity of financial resources— and the shocking realization that government spending cannot be infinite— Congress is choosing the predictable route.
Rather than look to themselves to become more efficient, to make objective and ruthless decisions about what programs stay and what programs go, to live within their means… they are instead demanding more resources.
Of course they always start with calls to “tax the rich”. But these taxes invariably trickle down to the middle class; just ask anyone who had to submit an AMT return this week.
But the point here isn’t to argue whether Jeff Bezos should or shouldn’t pay more tax. The point is that Congress’s approach is entirely wrong.
As we discussed yesterday, they fail to understand a very simple point: higher tax rates don’t generate higher overall tax revenue. Higher tax revenue comes from a booming economy.
So they should instead invest their energy into ensuring maximum productivity… which ultimately means fewer regulations, and in general staying out of the way.
It’s also insane that they are specifically refusing to cut spending. Despite hundreds of billions worth of documented fraud, they do nothing about it. They’ve also pledged to NOT reform Social Security and Medicare, i.e. the single biggest budget items in government.
It’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. They still don’t have the right mentality to solve America’s #1 problem… and it’s why having a Plan B makes so much sense.
