It would appear the choice between deflationary and inflationary monetary systems was, at some point along the way, democratised.

And the majority chose inflationary monetary systems.

Each of us is free to offer to pay for goods and services with, say, for example, gold, and each of us is free to ask you trade your gold for legal tender and give us that instead - yeah, the one the tax agency accepts.

The only thing stopping deflationary currency from being used by most people is that most people are too busy surfing / skiing / rock climbing / recovering from a hang over / what have you to care much about how monetary value is exchanged. People, on the whole, only seem to really care about convenience. And more specifically, the more convenient it is to spend money, your own or credit, the better.

You don't really have a choice, though. If you want to do business with most people, you're going to be doing it in inflationary currencies.

But is that the way it should be? Also, this isn't universally true. There are some vendors that started accepting Bitcoin as payment. Some of them stopped accepting it a few months ago when transaction fees were insane, but there are still some that do. You can even get debit cards that automatically convert to fiat on the backend, so the consumer can hold crypto and pay in fiat.

"But is that the way it should be?"

Unless you want to be able to force others to accept whatever you want to give as payment, sure.