I've been trying to wrap my head around this myself as it does seem pretty counter intuitive (based on personal experience - 5% change in prices over the course of a year in either direction has no impact on my purchasing decisions).
I think the key issue is that deflation makes borrowing a really bad idea (as each year you effectively owe 5% more) and much of our economy depends on consumer debt (cars, housing, college degrees) but I'm willing to accept that a programmer's mind isn't well suited for grokking economics.
I managed to win 3 tickets in CA (over a period of about 9 years) using trial by written declaration. In fact one of them was using a very similar argument to OPs. It's a bunch of work as I painstakingly assembled my case with loads of supporting evidence but I think it's important to stand up for yourself.
Admittedly all 3 cases were dismissed because the officer didn't bother to write a response but TBWD is a lot cheaper than lawyering up and does sometimes work.
I've been watching Rust for a while from the game development perspective and as much as I want it to be, I don't think it's a great fit for that domain. Still rooting for Rust because we really have a lot of work on the security front but I've been having a great deal of fun programming in Nimrod (http://nimrod-lang.org/). It's a bit of a one man show but there's a lot to like.
I really like both of them too. I really like Nimrod. The smaller community and (at least when I last checked) bad documentation especially for async stuff made me worry a bit.
However we should remember both languages are basically pre-release. They are not finished. That will take a while. After that it can take a while for a nice eco system and a common coding style to emerge. Not in the sense of hard rules, but when a community emerges around a language it's a bit like they develop a common accent and vocabulary. From that on other stuff develops, thickening the eco system fixing bugs, developing stable libraries. All of these things take and a lot of it is done by the first people getting into the language, even before it is released.
However I think it will still take a while of people trying to do something completely new with both languages to find and get rid of rough edges, while learning to use the language.
Look at Go for example. They enforce thing with fmt, etc. and it has been in use for a while now, but despite being used in production by many companies the ecosystem is still developing rapidly, there are still known problems to be fixed in future releases, there are still completely new things done with Go, the community didn't really "settle" (of course never happens completely, else there would be stagnation) about certain things, there is (IMO) still no really good IDE, there is still a lot to be made and most importantly there are no "Gurus" yet. Okay, maybe you wouldn't call them gurus, but there is still a hype phase. And if you look back to slightly older languages. Node.js still has a lot of those problems too, but the hype is slowly going away (other than on fronts, like Meteor, etc.), making many things way more rational. This means certain people move away from it, but others are just starting to actually consider it, because things are in place.
You can also look way back. C and C++ have a huge eco system, Perl has a module system where each library you make publicly available on CPAN is tested across a lot of versions, against tons of platforms. Well, you might think about the language in one way or the other, but that are the kind of projects that you really want if you think about using a language in production/enterprise.
In the startup world things are a bit different, cause you often are okay to take certain risks in exchange for development speed for example. Of course that really depends on what you are doing, but I guess it is hard to deny that a lot of (successful and not so successful) startups base upon very new, cutting or even bleeding edge technologies, while older or enterprise companies tend to be way more conservative about that.
Provided that Bitcoin succeeds (reaches the end of its adoption S-curve), wouldn't the deflation be simply equal to the rate of growth of the gross world product? This is currently around 4% - definitely more expensive than today's 'free' money but not insanely so...
I guess it would, assuming the only currency participating in that universe is Bitcoin OR bitcoins could not be exchanged, directly or indirectly, for other currencies.
Moving from UK to US, the dire state of banking here was one of the most noticeable regressions. I'd add to your list the crazy ATM fees.
We switched to Ally (online only bank) a while ago which fixes some of the issues. At least now I can deposit cheques by awkwardly photographing them with my phone and new chequebooks are free...
That's because it's the unit of value that the article's reader is most likely familiar with. When you go on vacation you're most likely constantly converting prices in the local currency to the currency you're familiar with - that doesn't mean the local currency is worthless (if that's what you were implying).
After I moved from UK to US, it was months before I stopped doing the mental arithmetic from USD to GBP.
Looking for talented engineers to work on Natural Selection 2. Would consider remote work for the right candidate.
The tech is some of the best I've seen in the 11 odd years I've worked in the games industry. Team is small (8 in the office, few more remote) and most excellent. We are a creatively independent, well funded, rather ambitious, anti-crunch, post-hierarchy, release often, 'real' games company.
I think the key issue is that deflation makes borrowing a really bad idea (as each year you effectively owe 5% more) and much of our economy depends on consumer debt (cars, housing, college degrees) but I'm willing to accept that a programmer's mind isn't well suited for grokking economics.