Spending 10x more on hardware will give you roughly 10x more value; I don't think spending 10x more on programmers will give you roughly 10x more value. And that's not even counting the fact hardware is cheap while programmers aren't.
The idea of the article is that footprint matters and needs to be reexamined periodically. This is true for programmers (sadly) as well as hardware. "Hardware is cheap" is not a sustainable growth substitute for efficient solutions. We see the same thing with outsourcing, where a company discovers that ten programmers for the price of one does not always yield the desired outcome (faster, cheaper, better).
Because of course everyone wants to be in a position to use your math (10x more on hardware == 10x more value), but you can not be confident of that unless you know that your solution has a hardware bottleneck. And you don't know that until you drain the swamp (or stress test extensively).