Granted, in a deflationary environment, investments will be less profitable if the projects being invested in are dependent on consumers spending money frivolously.
> Investment is key to growth/innovation but there has to be some demand there. Demand creation is always overlooked, when wages aren't raised, when companies move out of the US etc. These things directly impact demand and purchasing power of consumers at all levels eventually.
Society gains purchasing power at large in a deflationary environment.
And note that, if the American economy grows 10% in a year, the Fed will still strive for inflation. If economic growth is 10% and inflation is 1%, the upper echelons of society will have skimmed 10% off the top, robbing society of that growth. Conversely, in a Bitcoin world, the 10% economic growth is returned to the savers in the form of more purchasing power.
I believe we will witness the rise of the leisure economy. Most people who still hold jobs will perform them in fields related to tourism and leisure activities, such as yoga teachers, tour guides, climbing, diving, boxing, golf instructors, etc. Basically robots/computers will eventually perform all tasks which do not necessarily require a human. Or in other words: The leisure industry will always require humans because it's catering for human experiences and not human needs.
New currencies are needed but bitcoin and old school gold for that matter encourage hoarding, gold is worse because the control of gold is owned by physical mining. At least bitcoin doesn't leave monetary value up to physical mining, but still it does encourage hoarding. If a currency gains value over time doing nothing then investment will be lower.
Fiat currencies encourage investment because the value of your money goes down if it sits and is hoarded. Even though control of the currency is by the Fed and shadowy banking cabals, at least it spawns investment by wealth as they like to increase their money not see it slowly fade away to inflation.
Investment is key to growth/innovation but there has to be some demand there. Demand creation is always overlooked, when wages aren't raised, when companies move out of the US etc. These things directly impact demand and purchasing power of consumers at all levels eventually.
What will the robots build, sell or manage if noone has any money to buy anything? I don't necessarily buy that robots will remove all work. Computers were supposed to do the same, it has just enabled productivity gains to do more with less. There will always be more work to do, we haven't even explored very far off this rock. We need robots at every level but it won't mean less work, we'll have robot armies and it will enable entrepreneurs to do more with less.