>> a monetary system based on fixed currency often leads make deflation a problem for the average person

> Why is this a problem? The problems arise from rising prices not the contrary.

For one, moderate inflation reduces the burden of debt, which a good portion of people are in, e.g., mortgages, student loans. Deflation makes debt more burdensome. Further, The Haves are generally the ones lending money to the Have-Nots, and so deflation would make worse the effects of wealth inequality (which have hit levels last seen in the Gilded Age).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Effects

> Yeah we've moved on for a reason : to print more "money".

It allows for more flexibility for various economic conditions. See James and Bemanke for example:

> Deflation (and the constraints on central bank policy imposed by the gold
standard) was an important cause of banking panics, which occurred in a number of countries in the early 1930s. As discussed for the case of the United States by Bernanke (1983), to the extent that bank panics interfere with nor- mal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy; indeed, it is possible that economic performance may be affected even without major panics, if the banking system is sufficiently weakened. Because severe banking panics are the form of financial crisis most easily identified empiri- cally, we will focus on their effects in this paper. However, we do not want to lose sight of a second potential effect of falling prices on the financial sector, which is "debt deflation" (Fisher 1933; Bernanke 1983; Bernanke and Gertler 1990). By increasing the real value of nominal debts and promoting insol- vency of borrowers, deflation creates an environment of financial distress in which the incentives of borrowers are distorted and in which it is difficult to extend new credit. Again, this provides a means by which falling prices can have real effects.

[…]

> Once the deflationary process had begun, central banks engaged in competitive deflation and a scramble for gold, hoping by raising cover ratios to protect their currencies against speculative attack. Attempts by any individual central bank to reflate were met by immediate gold outflows, which forced the central bank to raise its discount rate and deflate once again. According to Temin, even the United States, with its large gold reserves, faced this constraint. Thus Temin disagrees with the suggestion of Friedman and Schwartz (1963) that the Federal Reserve's failure to protect the U.S. money supply was due to misunderstanding of the problem or a lack of leadership; instead, he claims, given the commitment to the gold standard (and, presumably, the absence of effective central bank cooperation), the Fed had little choice but to let the banks fail and the money supply fall.

* http://www.nber.org/chapters/c11482

The sooner that countries got off the gold standard in the Great Depression the sooner they started to recover.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Causes_of_the_Gr...

For a history of the use of gold as currency see The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Bernstein (the second edition has an introduction by Volcker):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein

Economic activity can be hampered by the lack of money if there is only a fixed amount:

> Although there are instances in economic his- tory in which moderate deflation is accompanied by economic growth, deflation as extreme as in the 1930s is virtually always linked to falling output and employment. The literature suggests various mecha- nisms through which deflation may affect production and employment. Three in particular appear to have played a role in the Great Depression (see Bernanke and James, 1991; Bernanke, 1995):

* https://www.snb.ch/en/mmr/reference/quartbul_2003_2/source/q...

It is possible to literally run out of money and not be able to do business:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine

(Bernstein has a chapter on this.)

Austerity economic measures are associated with deflation (or at least deflationary tendencies) in the past as well:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Da...