Regulations and taxes do put an upward pressure in prices and a downward pressure in quality.

Both have a tendency to make companies immune to market pressures and vulnerable to political pressures.

This is why I believe we won't see a 'deflationary utopia' that Jeff Booth describes even on a Bitcoin standard, as long as we have governments.

But then he does say that there's a tendency for prices to fall in the *free market*, which cannot exist as long as there's a government with a territorial monopoly on violence.