Curiously, wouldn't this be the expected outcome of an economy centered around an unlimited money printer?<p>From a pure incentives perspective, The optimal way to make money by building things in such an economy but instead by disbursing the printed money for a fee or by taking ownership in a monopoly. In theory if one was to be the owner of a commodity business in an economy with negative interest rates, the cost of launching a <i>new</i> competitor will always be lower than the price of operating an existing firm.<p>Effectively no one would want to own ~$100 billion dollars of capital equipment as the N+1 market participant will always have a lower cost structure, meaning your $100 billion dollar investment will soon be worthless if switching costs are low.