When astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to fly on the moon, reported a space issue that would have attached any IT help desk ticket, something clicked for Americans. His complaint? “There is no joy in seeing the device in the list of available devices when I try to re-pair it after forgetting Bluetooth.”
Commander Reid Wiseman, who orbits the Earth on the Artemis II mission, broadcast Houston about the problem millions of office workers say: “I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of them works.” There is a lot that creates “one small human step…”
Internet commentators found these moments painfully relatable and shared them widely. Why are those quotes about technology maintenance increasing in April 2026? Beneath the comedy lies the most underappreciated cost of modernity: we are very rich, and that wealth means we own a lot of things. More stuff means more stuff that breaks, more stuff that needs updating, more stuff that needs troubleshooting guides, more passwords to forget and recover from. Even multi-billion dollar space hardware uses the same consumer software we use every day. There is a certain democracy of frustration here.
The old problems didn’t go away, either. The Artemis system is plagued by a malfunctioning toilet. Even if we put in new technology, the old heads are always there. We still have leaky pipes and dead batteries. And now we have Wi-Fi dead spots, incompatible Bluetooth drivers, and cloud storage accounts we can’t access because we changed our phone number.
Wealth and Happiness: The Running Debate
This raises a question that EconLog readers know well: does wealth actually make us happier?
It is one of the site’s oldest arguments. Arnold Kling began in 2003, arguing against the prevailing belief that income should produce more happiness. If not, why would people choose to get it? David Henderson complicates the picture further, expressing doubts about international happiness surveys.
Scott Sumner, in his review of Tyler Cowen’s book on economic growth, accepted the broad finding that wealth and well-being are related but noted that the relationship goes in many indirect directions: better health outcomes, a cleaner environment, reduced violence, expanded human rights. Growth, he argued, should be the default policy stance even if we are uncertain about its direct happiness effects.
Recently, Bryan Caplan took an interesting position: he calls himself an economic optimist but a pessimist about happiness. He looks at the data and sees real strong growth. He also looks at the data and sees that income does not match the happiness needle. He concludes that we are materially rich, and should enjoy it, even if survey respondents don’t report feeling much better.
I believe that progress is good and that people pursue high income for a reason. Having more makes us better, but astronaut complaints show the mental toll that comes with it. This helps explain, in part, why the gains in happiness are not even greater.
Consider the distribution of the burden of many things in a typical family. Parents face a level of household complexity such as choosing between subscription services and managing multiple accounts. Dads who once needed to know how to change the oil and fix a leaky faucet can now also serve as the de facto IT department: managing family passwords and troubleshooting smart TVs. Children face being locked out of their homework because they forgot the password.
None of this is a “skills problem,” as the astronaut examples make clear. The structure. The NASA team has a team of junior engineers to deal with their technical problems, while most of us have a four-year YouTube course.
Our devices connect us and entertain us. I will continue to enjoy syncing my phone to my car stereo and scrolling through the entire Apple Music library until something breaks. Are we very happy today with many things? I believe we are better, as a whole. However, to paraphrase the Notorious BIG, “more money, more problems.”
Featured image, “Illuminated in Orion” from NASA.
