People, or organizations, but mainly people, can just refuse to invest in stuff, parking their money in low-interest bank accounts, or the old style "stuffed into mattresses."

This was the multi-decade problem Japan ran into after its hot economy imploded, and unleashed the "lost decade" (which became decades). It was not a marginal issue, and for year the Japanese government tried everything it could think of to get people to invest in things - to little effect.