Or, put another way, the speed at which money can move from one party to the next via LN enables more economic activity overall to occur than if traditional finance were used. At least that's what makes sense to me.
Here's a scenario. If I am a freelancer, I might receive payment from clients who pay using their credit or debit card through a payment processor. That payment might be performed in the afternoon, and when I go to "withdraw" the funds, I will have to wait a day or two for the ACH payment to occur and then for my bank to credit my bank account for those funds.
So that's a couple days that those funds are not used in commerce (at least, not by me). I already know how I will be spending those funds, but I cannot yet do that spending until the funds are available in my account. And then when I spend, for example, by paying with my bank debit card, the merchant I paid likely will not have their bank account credited for the payment for a day or two as well.
Back when I had a sufficient level of savings, I might have made the purchases with funds from savings, knowing that I could replenish my savings once my client's payment arrived. But without that savings, I am needing to wait for those funds to be received and spendable and thus my economic activity that would have occurred right away doesn't happen for a period of time.
If I instead receive payment from my client in bitcoin, I will have access to the funds within about ten to thirty minutes (i.e., a block or two). But even then, I'm thinking about the on-chain fees. I might not use those funds for smaller purchases.
If I instead receive payment via LN, I wouldn't even need to wait more than a few seconds. That lets me make my purchases and payments right away. And then the recipient(s) of the payment(s) from me now have the ability to, just seconds later, turn around and engage in whatever commerce they might have been holding back on until they too received sufficient funds.
I know the concept of "velocity of money", and it makes sense to me that removing payment friction can increase the number of times a certain amount of money turns over for a specified period of time. And thus with less money but a higher velocity of money, economic activity in aggregate doesn't necessarily need to go down.
But I've not really seen this argument made that as inflation drains our finances, payment friction affects our spending (by deferring that spending until the funds are truly received and spendable). I also know that many people already use cash exclusively (either by choice or by necessity), but I'm not suspecting their spending behavior would change much once using bitcoin and LN.
I am mostly trying to point out how embracing bitcoin and LN can help lessen the impact of worsening economic conditions by eliminating the delays that traditional finance imposes and with those delays gone, more economic activity can occur than before -- especially for those most adversely impacted by those delays (i.e., those without sufficient savings).
Is this an accurate assessment?