That's certainly not a good example. The price has grown much faster than inflation in the western world, while the issuance of new currency has trended down, not only as a percentage of total money supply, but in nominal terms:
https://www.wisdomtree.com/-/media/us-media-files/blog/blog-...
While in theory the community can elect to inflate the money supply, in practice the people who get to vote on the issue are holders of currency, who have strong incentives to restrict the supply and deflate the currency. If an inflationary EIP is proposed, these people will simply ignore it and stick to the deflationary chain.
There is always confusion when discussing deflation and inflation because there are multiple definitions. There is a inflation/deflation which refers to the size of supply and then price inflation which refers to the cost in some other fiat currency. The former is simple and clear, the latter depends on other variables.
You are ignoring the large amounts of coin that are taken out of circulation by software and hardware bugs, owner death or amnesia, intentional destruction by transfer to unspendable addresses. For bitcoin, by credible estimates we are already talking about millions of coins.
While in theory the community can elect to inflate the money supply, in practice the people who get to vote on the issue are holders of currency, who have strong incentives to restrict the supply and deflate the currency. If an inflationary EIP is proposed, these people will simply ignore it and stick to the deflationary chain.