> It seems the rate of advancement has increased over time though.

Effort and expenditures are not fixed. You cannot hand wave away these variables.

Here's an example let's compare two investment strategies:

  - Alice puts $1 into VOO every day. 
  - Bob puts in $10000 into VOO every day.

You don't get to say "wow, Bob is a much better investor than Alice. He's so smart, look how fast his money grows!" You get to say "Bob is investing more money than Alice."

Now pretend Bob is investing into a slower growing account than Alice. His account will still grow faster as long as his account is not losing >99.9% per day. He could have a worse strategy and still grow faster because he's throwing more money at it