Inflation is not a feature or a bug. Inflation is not even the "problem". It is a side-effect of the treatment to the problem. So how does Bitcoin solve the problem?

The real problem isn't with the currency at all... far as I can tell.

What is the real problem then?

To answer this I have to try to understand what currency is. And what it isn't.

Currency is a store of value, or energy. To increase the efficiency of trade. Currency doesn't run an economy, but currency is what an economy runs on.

Currency doesn't have to do anything in itself except exist. Ideally it is trackable, tradeable, and close to impossible to counterfeit. If I imagine the economy as an engine, currency isn't the gas, it's the oil. It doesn't generate energy, it transfers it, and keeps the economic machinery moving smoothly as possible. But none of the power (value) of the engine (economy) comes from the oil (currency), it comes from the gasoline (our hard work). Oil generates no power, only transfers it smoothly.

So what's the actual problem: The engine itself is leaking oil and threatening to overheat and explode. There's not enough currency value in circulation because it keeps getting funnelled to the same place / leaking.

Dropping the engine analogy, nobody has any fucking money anymore because wages don't go up, among a million other things, because corporate greed/bribes. Meaning corporations making more money and CEOs hoarding more money, meaning less and less money in the economy. Before any damage is done the fed prints more money to cycle through the economy before it too is lost into the leak. Eventually the economy becomes such an efficient money funnel to the top 1% that the economy reaches the point where it is basically a 2 step process of the government handing citizens money to hand to corporations. So it's essentially the government handing corporations money, even though the only reason they have to print money in the first fucking place is because those same corporations already have too much of the money. There is no longer and ebb and flow. It's all flow, straight to the top. And no economy can last on this model, as hyper inflation is soon to follow.

The irony being that printing money is supposed to be a redistribution of wealth, taking the most value from the people who have disproportionately more, and redistributing it back into the economy and the pockets of the citizens, but almost all of the printed money is funnelled back into the same problematic oversized bank accounts within a few months, so the only people to experience the loss of wealth due to inflation are the lower class. Who don't get enough money, basically have to spend it as they get it, and any money they do manage to hang onto is devalued.

And finally, my real question: How does Bitcoin actually solve any of this? Some people believe there will always be a hybrid of currencies, and that might be fine. But to those of you who believe bitcoin does solve these issues and should take over as the reserve currency one day; do you just expect the government to somehow design an economy that doesn't leak? Because there's nothing I can see inherent to bitcoin that can prevent the same economic corruption we face today. What happens if the 1% continue to store their currency and just keep accumulating more? Eventually there won't be enough currency in the rest of the economy to keep it operating. This is when the government would normally turn on the printer, but if they can't, the economy will just have to work itself out. What would actually happen? Are we just trusting that a new government builds a new economy around a new currency? And we are just going to hope that they understand how any corruption will result in runaway power consolidation? Even without corruption, power can and usually will consolidate, just from luck or natural success. Would an economy running solely on a currency like bitcoin have to accept undergoing something like a wealth redistribution every generation or something? Because when there's not enough oil in the engine, it grinds to a halt, and people die, civilizations collapse.

Inflation in itself isn't a problem. It is a side-effect, with benefits and downsides which reflect the health of the economy itself. You can't just get rid of inflation and think that solves the overall problem, when the only reason inflation is seen as a problem in the first place is because of how problematic the entire economic system has become.