I'd had basically the same thought, and I was more or less trying to reproduce how I got to it, hopefully with some references. I completely agree that it some

I'd had basically the same thought, and I was more or less trying to reproduce how I got to it, hopefully with some references. I completely agree that it somehow seems self-evident, but that's sort of weak tea. If we've lost the ability to use inflation as a steering mechanism for the economy ( and boy does it look like we have ) then I think that explains much of our present pain and suffering. It is as if we've basically internalized inflation bad" back to our limbic system and we only react in the one direction now. I don't know if this will help, but I read the rise of all the political ... unpleasantness in the 1930s - leading to the deaths of 4% of all humans in the 1940s - as a manifestation of this same phenomenon.