Technology is an unstoppable deflationary force

Technological progress — compounding gains in computing, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, additive manufacturing, and solar energy — is a deflationary force on prices so large that no monetary policy can permanently offset it; observed inflation persists only because credit and debt expansion mask the underlying price decline. This is the central thesis of Jeff Booth's The Price of Tomorrow (2020) and a recurring frame in Bitcoin-adjacent economic debate.

Nuance: The premise that technology lowers the real cost of specific goods (compute, storage, solar per watt) is well documented; the contested step is the aggregate claim. Mainstream macroeconomics attributes the price level primarily to monetary and fiscal conditions, not to sector-level productivity, and points to decades of technology gains coexisting with positive consumer-price inflation — including the post-2020 inflation episode after the book's publication. Booth's rejoinder is that this coexistence is exactly his point: it takes ever-larger credit expansion to hold prices up against the technology trend. The disagreement is about counterfactuals and is not settled by either side's headline numbers. A careful debater should also separate falling quality-adjusted prices for technology goods from falling prices for housing, healthcare, and education, where the claim is weakest.

Common misstatements: "Prices are already falling economy-wide" (they are not, in most CPI baskets; the claim is about what prices would do absent credit expansion). "Booth predicted deflation and it happened" (measured consumer inflation rose sharply in 2021–2023; supporters read this as policy response confirming the thesis, critics as disconfirmation — that dispute is the claim's live edge).