What? I completely fail too see what your point is here. Why would my management ask me to work 10 extra hours a week? What does that have to do with deflation?
> Well they're certainly avoiding the whole "pushing up" part.
How come rates go up then? What evidence do you have that they're 'avoiding' the pushing up of rates? Where is all the consumer inflation that they are allegedly creating?
> If they were smoothing the cycles out in a sustainable manner, we wouldn't be talking about negative interest rates.
Yes they would, because we are entering a potential depression. Smoothing out means cutting when things are bad and increasing when things are good. You have to act at both ends to achieve stable prices.
> Instead, they lower interest rates and keep them there because economic reality is politically inconvenient.
You are very good at making outlandish claims and not so good at backing them up. What evidence do you have that central banks have departed from their mandated inflation targeting regime?
> How much of this can be attributed to natural technological progress
Almost all of it, but technological progress cannot happen without a stable economy. People don't build factories unless they believe they can realise a steady income.
> And what percentage of the excess wealth (compared to an undriven economy) has been actually used to raise people out of poverty?
We do not live in a driven economy. We live in an economy where the value of money is kept stable in order to counteract the economy's natural tendency towards boom and bust. What do you mean when you say the economy is 'driven'? Give an actual economic definition of this term.
> It's not sustainable progress to get the masses out of poverty if you've used up most of the natural resources in the process.
Sustainability is entirely orthogonal to monetary policy. Neither have any affect on each other,
> The person who borrowed is the second recipient, the bank takes the first cut through fees and increased interest
No, they are the first recipient. Why do you say they are the second? They get the money first, therefore they are the first recipient. The bank gets interest, but interest accrues after the loan has been made. Your claim makes no sense.
> The government gets to tap into the supply through perpetual deficit spending.
So once again, it appears that the borrowers are the first recipient!
Your last part shows you don't understand the economic laws of nominal pricing. There's no point me discussing this, as you could go and look up the theory yourself.
> why do they violently shut down competition?
They don't. Very few countries have laws restricting what currency you can use. Many people have created alternative currency systems. But very few people use them precisely because national currencies win in the market.