Money is a debt from society to its holder. You can exchange work or stuff for it, with the expectation that society will accept it at a later time for some stuff. So it's just a matter of deciding how the debt evolves over time.

That part is specifically meant to contrast deflation with either stagflation or inflation. If you drop the nominal price over time, you're setting a Ponzi scheme. By virtue of selling something in the past and holding on to the token, you're entitled to more of it in the future, without any risk. And you're preventing the token from being spent by someone now who could use it.

And likewise, I appreciate the line of questioning, it helps me reflect and think about this. The details are a bit fuzzy, and I'll need to think more about some goods that seem deflationary (computers for example)

Interesting insights, thank you for sharing. I will need to think it over as well (and maybe read up on economics) ...

> Money is a debt from society to its holder.

I disagree. Money is a store of value that is separate from society - gold is an international currency accepted organically because of its useful and intrinsic properties, with thousands of years of history in a wide variety of cultures that had no link before trade began.

There is no "debt" here. Society doesn't "owe" the holder of money anything, necessarily.

I think your confusion stems from the imperfect wording in the original phrase. What @karpierz meant (and his/her subsequent sentence supports it) is a) that society in this context implies government and b) that money is a legal tender that, upon tendering (i.e., offering as payment), discharges any debts (e.g., loans, purchases, taxes).

By the way, you're wrong in that money a) is only a store of value (it also functions as a medium of exchange and a unit of account) and b) is separate from society (in the modern world, in most countries, it is only government who has legal right to issue [primary] money).