People don’t run just a single app in their machines
That's not bloat, that's people running more apps than ever.
the end result is the necessity for a constant and fast increase in hardware resources.
That's not true. 8 to 16GB RAM machines became common in early 2010-s and barely anyone is using 32 gigs today. Even if we look at the most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey, we will see that even gamers are pretty much stuck with 16 gigs. 32 gigs are installed on less than 30% of machines and more than that is barely 4%. Ten years ago 8 gigs was the most common option with 12+ gigs (Steam didn't have 16gig category in 2014) being the third option. The switch to 16 gigs being number one happened in December 2019, so we're five years in with 16 gigs being the most common option and more RAM is not getting anywhere close to replacing it (47.08% for 16 gigs and 28.72% for 32 gigs as of May 2024).
Now if you look at late 90-s and 2000-s you will see that RAM was doubling pretty much every 2-3 years. We can look at Steam data once again. Back in 2008 (that's the earliest data available on archive.org) 2 gigs were the most common option. Next year 3 gigs option got very close and sat at 2nd place. In 2010 2GB, 3GB and 4GB were splitting hairs. 4GB option became the most common in 2011 with 3GB variant being very close 2nd place. 5GB option became the king in 2012. And the very next year 8 gigs became the norm.