In order to produce capital goods, and hence more consumer goods, we must first forego current consumption. That is, we must save now to have more later.
The real problem with inflation, properly understood is that it is essentially a wealth transfer away from the most productive parts of the economy. This causes bubbles and economic fragility.
Thanks to past interventions, the economy is now rife with malinvestments and prices that don't reflect real demand. The solution is to allow deflation and other types of painful readjustment. Otherwise true growth will elude us.
Central banks have decided that one of their main missions is to prevent deflation. But this only ends up causing the malinvestments that lead to economic busts.
Prices and purchasing power are determined by how individual consumers value goods and services. The "velocity of money" won't help us understand prices or the money supply.
Although the money supply has greatly increased, accompanying growth in production has made it possible to keep the current system of immense debt increase going for a long time.
There is productive consumption and there is non-productive consumption. In the Keynesian mind, it's not necessary to produce anything, so long as people spend and consume endlessly, even to the point of destroying real wealth.
Assuming that some groups of foragers indeed practiced "primitive communism," they would have died out because they had lost the fierce competition with the more economically viable "libertarian" tribes. Communism has never appeared spontaneously and "naturally" in the history of mankind.
