1. Like you said, the only difference in the Black Friday example is the price decrease is sustained over the long run, versus perceived as temporary. But all this does is slow down the effect, not change it. When the economy is driven by savings, and not debt, people spend when prices fall.

— Again the underlying framing is forgetting that prices ONLY naturally fall for extended periods because of growth. Meaning the idea that it prevents or halts growth & spending is just fundamentally backwards. Our entire capacity to consume is derivative of our capacity to produce. If we produce more, we will consume more. At the end of the day it really is that simple.

— Also we need to understand the difference between savings and debt spending. When prices fall and we have savings, it creates what’s referred to as “The Wealth Effect.” Things we have wanted, but we’re going to cost all of our savings, are now available if we only use 1/3rd of our savings. Which makes it suddenly viable to make the purchase and not put yourself or family at risk. The wealth from the price deflation is exactly what encourage people to spendOn. We evens see an exaggerated version of this in #Bitcoin. When the price shoots up, people who’ve had BTC savings makes tons of purchases at BTC companies. Nobody buys shit during the best markets.

2. I frame it from consumers because that’s what Keynesians argue. I’m countering their nonsense directly.

— Actually the opposite of your concern with producers occurs. The short term mindset and aggressive “sell as fast as possible” mentality is what happens when all production is funded **with debt.** because they are financed, they can’t think further out, they can’t just pause and wait for a higher quality, or longer term production option. They need to sell immediately and in great quantity.

— When savings is what drives the cycles, producers are far more scrutinizing about their investments being high quality. If they aren’t producing long term value goods, that will be worth the cost of a valuable money, then they DONT waste resources on it.

——— understand this is a fundamentally CRUCIAL incentive. Because the normal deflation is the *average* of growth that’s expected from all other producers. Meaning wasting resources on below average goods and services is actually *destructive* to the creation of value. Less value is created than if they did nothing, and left those resources for someone else. It’s a literal miracle that we have this coordinating mechanism that lets us know how productive our resources have to be. This ensures that only the most valuable, longest lasting investments, with the most clear or potentially massive consumer demand & benefit actually use up our scarce resources.

Lastly, there one more extremely fundamental point that negates both concerns. Which brings us back the the “thermometer” understanding of deflation: If any of those concerns play out… prices don’t fall. Again, this is the most important thing to internalize — the prices fall BECAUSE of growth. So ANY concern you have over it stopping growth, is immediately negated by the fact that the price deflation doesn’t occur if those examples ever played out. They don’t as I hope I explained, but even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because the price would reflect exactly that change.

The economy is literally just a giant balancing force against supply and demand, and it works shockingly well if the money is actually stable in supply. It only breaks down when we cheat the accounting system and our absolute to communicate is poisoned by a bunch of counterfeiters.

And just to address specifically: Reducing their risk appetite is exactly the opposite, again. It’s the inflationary environment that pushes trillions of dollars into bullshit indexes trying to grab a reliable 5% per year just to not get butt raped by inflation, which shoved every bit of useful capital into giant, bloated corporations with the literal least chance of significant growth, because they’re already huge.

Savings on the other hand gives optionality. It means that people can just build what they *want to see in the world,* even if they don’t make any immediate, or even ANY profit. I can only use myself as an example here. I have enough savings that I’m hiring developers to build an app that solves a huge, persistent, infuriating problem I’ve had for more than a decade. I went into it not caring if it would be profitable, I simply want to see this problem fixed, I know I can do it, and I’m pretty sure a huge number of other people would love to have it too.

If I was finding this on debt, the project literally could not ever happen, unless I knew it was going to be huge and could pay itself back. Because I’m using savings, I don’t really care, I just want to build something awesome.

People aren’t homo-economicus. We aren’t machines, we have dreams, lives, families, and passions. Money isn’t an end, it’s purely a means to protect ourselves from uncertainty, and connect us together as a society. The idea that we won’t do anything if money goes up in value, we won’t take any risks, and we will just sit around “getting rich” with money. Is less about misunderstanding “economics,” and more about misunderstanding the human spirit and the purpose of life.

When people are scrambling, in debt, and trapped in their situation, their spirit is crushed, they are afraid of everything, and never want to “step out of line” because other people control their living standards.

When people feel secure in society and in their position in life, they do fucking incredible things.