Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?
Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].
Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...
Off to a great start there, champ.
> Huge TV
Just like with air travel, TV:s have gotten larger and cheaper for a long, long time before data harvesting even existed as a factor. Yes, the price of TV:s are continuing to drop. Mostly because of cheaper panels. Of course manufacturers claim that TV:s would be unsellably expensive without telemetry, but then again, they make lots of money off it and "cheap" is a neat way to justify that.
Current prices might've taken a bit longer to reach without telemetry - although the latest most significant price drops occurred a decade ago or more, well before spy TV:s were baseline models.
Today, you can buy a 32" monitor for $200, and they've not yet begun spying on us. For pure screen real estate, yes, it costs more than a 55" model. But is it "expensive"? Heck, would it be "expensive" if it was a 28" CRT, like the one my current LCD TV replaced a decade ago?
Sacrificing privacy for constant upgrades to something bigger and ostensibly better is, to reply in kind, if anything a kind of wealth blindness: What could possibly go wrong to anyone who owns a 55 inch TV?
And if you weren't in America with money, you could barely do anything online.
Hotels, air travel? So expensive. Way cheaper now. TVs? So cheap now. And where I lived you couldn't even book your own flights at the time. You needed a travel agent. Up costs. Nightmare.