I don't have a particular answer to your rhetorical questions, but I do have some thoughts on inflation and deflation, specifically with regard to their relationship to hoarding and the money supply.
First, deflation encourages hoarding when the holder can afford to spend at some infinite later date, but some spending happens earlier than the heat death of the universe by necessity (e.g. food and shelter, grandma needs assistance, execution of wills).
Second, when a currency is printed (inflated) by its host country, the effects of the increased money supply aren't experienced proportionally or immediately everywhere. Instead, the first pallet of new money retains most, if not all, of the buying power represented at the previous level of supply. This represents an asymmetrical information advantage for the producer of the currency, and represents a disadvantage for the currency consumer who probably isn't in a position to know whether they are selling goods for "cheaper" currency. For example, if you were playing poker, and had the ability to print Aces on demand and legally inject them into the game, the other players might not like that (esp. if the new cards are injected after they've already calculated their odds and placed a bet).
Various economic philosophies consider it best to have some level of inflation to lubricate the flow of goods and services between buyers and sellers, and in these cases it would be useful for everyone if the size of the money supply was widely known. Unfortunately, there are many different definitions for money supply such that it's actually pretty much impossible to know how much the value of one unit of the currency has changed between two points in time without comparing them to a third, also variable, commodity or currency (e.g. gold, foreign currencies)
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a deterministic money supply where any individual can determine the upper bound of the amount of supply at any time. In our poker analogy, the deck might be short a few cards, but no one has an extra stack of Aces in their shirt sleeve, and everyone can calculate their odds independently. Advanced investors can even enumerate the public ledger and determine the level of lost or otherwise illiquid coins to determine a tighter bound.
The ability to have a good understanding of the supply of the currency is one reason that Bitcoin is so exciting for long-distance transfers.
First, deflation encourages hoarding when the holder can afford to spend at some infinite later date, but some spending happens earlier than the heat death of the universe by necessity (e.g. food and shelter, grandma needs assistance, execution of wills).
Second, when a currency is printed (inflated) by its host country, the effects of the increased money supply aren't experienced proportionally or immediately everywhere. Instead, the first pallet of new money retains most, if not all, of the buying power represented at the previous level of supply. This represents an asymmetrical information advantage for the producer of the currency, and represents a disadvantage for the currency consumer who probably isn't in a position to know whether they are selling goods for "cheaper" currency. For example, if you were playing poker, and had the ability to print Aces on demand and legally inject them into the game, the other players might not like that (esp. if the new cards are injected after they've already calculated their odds and placed a bet).
Various economic philosophies consider it best to have some level of inflation to lubricate the flow of goods and services between buyers and sellers, and in these cases it would be useful for everyone if the size of the money supply was widely known. Unfortunately, there are many different definitions for money supply such that it's actually pretty much impossible to know how much the value of one unit of the currency has changed between two points in time without comparing them to a third, also variable, commodity or currency (e.g. gold, foreign currencies)
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a deterministic money supply where any individual can determine the upper bound of the amount of supply at any time. In our poker analogy, the deck might be short a few cards, but no one has an extra stack of Aces in their shirt sleeve, and everyone can calculate their odds independently. Advanced investors can even enumerate the public ledger and determine the level of lost or otherwise illiquid coins to determine a tighter bound.
The ability to have a good understanding of the supply of the currency is one reason that Bitcoin is so exciting for long-distance transfers.