Like precious metals? Deflationary currencies have been used successfully for over 1000 years.
The only people it is bad for are governments. Throughout history there is a patter of promising, spending, and becoming insolvent.
The idea that an individual wouldn't choose a deflationary currency is ludicrous. Inflationary currencies are what you want everyone else to use.
And by the way, the cat is out of the bag. Cryptocurrencies are here, bitcoin or not. When people can choose to use any currency they want, will they choose one that inflates? I doubt it.
Yes, like precious metals. The history of precious metal economies is pretty bad -- decades-long recessions and wars triggered by fluctuations in the commodity markets. Deflationary currency is not a good thing, and bitcoiners will eventually realize this.
(Note I work on Bitcoin Core and co-founded Blockstream, a prominant bitcoin company. The value of Bitcoin is not the currency, but rather what censorship-resistant, distributed global consensus gives us.)
AS sfackler points out, mining of precious metals has continued (though, like bitcoin, with diminishing returns over time).
They will choose an inflationary currency if they have any debt. Debt with deflation is very bad, and it's incredibly stupid to offer credit with deflation.
So let's see... We have an inflationary currency which is behind an increasing divide between the rich and the poor[0], and keeps people hooked on unsustainable growth to just survive, leading to intensifying environmental destruction and wanton consumption of limited resources... It's not like an inflationary currency is necessarily a good idea, either.
[0] before you say that inflation hurts the rich, among other reasons the if inflation didn't hurt the poor, we would never feel the political pressure to increase the minimum wage.
Essentially, if you think that a currency will be worth more tomorrow than it is today there is little reason for investment (or even spending!). It quickly becomes a spiral where no one wants to spend. Inflation provides a nice kick in the pants for people to put their money to good use.
This isn't a concern yet for Bitcoin because in the scheme of world economies BTC simply doesn't matter (it could go away tomorrow without any noticeable effects), but if in the future it becomes a critical thing it would be a major concern.
Then blocks continue to be created, but no more coins are mined (in practice, we will be mining tiny little fractions of a coin for a very long time until it drops off to true zero).
If no more coins are mined (or the mining rate drops to almost negligible levels), is there still any incentive for people to keep the blockchain alive by computing power? Aside from keeping the whole system alive, I mean.
When you request a transaction you also offer a fee. You get to set the fee. If miners don't like it they don't have to include your transaction, and if that happens your transaction will not get confirmed.
After no more coins are mined, miners will be relying entirely on transaction fees. At that point, competition will show us the real cost (and electricity used) for transactions.
Right now transaction fees are low(er) because miners can offset their costs against the coins that they mine as well.
That's always true of the future, but the difficulty is continually self adjusting and pluggable and quantum proof algos exist so that'll be about the timeline no matter the power of future CPU's.
The recent rise in price justifies bringing miners online or shifting them away from other cryptocoins.
Halving day is coming soon too.