Abundance requires deflation.
At a fundamental level, raising the standard of living means making goods and services more affordable to everyone. Lest the economists get upset, it’s not just any form of deflation, to be precise: it’s technological deflation, which is prolonged and sustained, and arises from increased productivity or better products. The path to prosperity comes from understanding how goods become cheap.
A common refrain is that cost reduction comes from economies of scale and learning effects. For every doubling of cumulative capacity, the unit costs drop by a certain percentage. That percentage value is called the learning rate, and it varies by industry and by product. This phenomenon is sometimes called “Wright’s law” and has been observed in virtually every industry1.