Hardware is now effectively free

It's not free if you have to buy it! It's just packaged differently to the end user. "Free" hardware used to supply you with Google and FB is paid for by selling your data. Cloud services that businesses subscribe to have the hardware costs built into the subscription fees.

Stop by a Fry's Electronics and see how much "free" hardware they have, lol!

Cloud hardware is expensive. What's changed is that virtualization has permitted selling computational power in units less than the physical CPU.

This in turn has driven greater price discrimination which leads to more efficient consumption, which is why in the era of "free" hardware Intel is raking in more cash than anyone ever thought possible.

its not free, you just dont own it anymore you lease it essentially, if anything its kind of a negative as like renting a house over having it on a mortgage youre not left with something with resale value at the end, however you are also not responsible for the cost of upkeep so i guess it offsets

Short story: Interest rates are near 0.