On the contrary, inflation forces you to buy products and invest in things you don't necessarily need, in order to escape the intentional destruction of your wealth. In a world where we are trying to avoid mindless consumption, inflation encourages that.

Deflation doesn't discourage investment and consumption. You still need to eat, have shelter, and pursue happiness. It increases the bar at which you will part with your money, as merely holding it has a high level of return. This is a superior system to me.

> Deflation doesn't discourage investment and consumption...it increases the bar at which you will part with your money

Euphemistically rephrasing something is not a refutation. Inflation does not make investment decisions "mindless", but deflation does make the average risk adjusted return on an investment negative.

> It increases the bar at which you will part with your money, as merely holding it has a high level of return. This is a superior system to me.

The "high level of return" is at the expense of people who are not freeloading, who are forced to create this return for others by making more stuff for less money. Why is it superior for the monetary system to be designed to reward those who put in no effort and take no risks at the expense of those who do?

I am philosophically opposed to a system where by intentional design, everyone’s money is debased continuously. It’s weird and immoral. You are forcing everyone to be a mini-hedge fund manager, or hire someone else to be one for them, to avoid the government-decision of destroying your wealth. It’s just stupid.

You can have an economy with a single dollar, if it can split far enough. Printing new money isn’t increasing the total amount of wealth in the world. It is redistribution.

> On the contrary, inflation forces you to buy products and invest in things you don't necessarily need, in order to escape the intentional destruction of your wealth. In a world where we are trying to avoid mindless consumption, inflation encourages that.

Or you can just put your money onto a bank account that nets interest. The fact that interest rates are down is actually the sort of result of deflation. The reserve currency status puts immense deflationary pressure onto the USD. The government is forced to go into debt to cancel this pressure. If it did not do so employment would plummet.

This used to be true, until bank accounts started to pay 0%, or a very small amount of interest which is less than even the official inflation rate (let alone the unofficial (and more accurate!) inflation rate).

There is not deflation happening right now. There is massive and sustained inflation, which you can see all around you in terms of high quality food prices (meat, cheese, seafood), housing, all forms of education not subsidized by the government, medicine, cars, and on and on.

The reserve currency status of the US dollar is a side effect of the US' relatively brief global hegemony which is rapidly collapsing, plus the reduced global importance of oil which has been priced almost exclusively in USD. There will be many threats to USD from other countries (China, the EU) and experimental technologies (Bitcoin, Ethereum).

Several generations of economists have bought full-on to a failed economic system. We have been seeing many problems with it over 40 years since we removed any pretense of the gold standard,[0] but we have seen it over and over and over with various crises. Anyone who thinks our current monetary system is the best humanity can do is not thinking critically.

[0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/