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If both directions can lead to runaway feedback, it likely needs to be controlled.
Barter economies have also never existed in human societies. They have either been gift economies (esp. with smaller tribes) or credit economies (records dating back to the earliest tables from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt). See:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
For a more recent example of a society becoming pure credit, see:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_bank_strikes_(1966–1976)
You'll be waiting forever, because this is not what it is.
Ideally inflation would be 0%, but that is impossible to do because it would mean that the "money" (however defined) available matches exactly that money that is needed for the economy to run and grow. But it is impossible to know/predict a priori how much would be needed.
So if you have too much money available, and more importantly moving around 'too much' (velocity), you get positive inflation. Now if you have too little money available (especially if it's 'hard money' like coins, and not credit), you get the effect of stifling economic activity:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine
You also have the effect that the people who have the (literal) coin being able to charge more for it (rent seeking) because everyone else wants/needs it to do business (notwithstanding credit arrangements).
So which is a bigger problem: too much money possibly allowing too much economic activity, or too little economic activity? In recent decades (post-Great Depression) the dogma is that we'd rather have positive inflation to have 'extra money' around so that activity is less hindered.
Further, there is a misguided idea that government creates money: it does not. (No, not even the central bank.) Money is created by private banks through credit:
* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-crea...
* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...
* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/132
And if you think that deposits are re-loaned out, this is utterly and completely wrong and out of date. Tobin called this "the old view" in 1963:
* https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cowles-discussion-paper-...
Because anti-trust is a joke, and most brands are owned by a handful of companies, which are chaired over by even fewer handful of investment firms. We are light-years away from the times when business mostly meant mom-and-pop where large scale coordination was impossible. Hell, big tech companies coordinated no-poaching agreements back in 2005, and you think corporations can't possibly find a way to coordinate price hikes in 2023?