You can sort of solve the inflation problem by zscoring the elo. Now a person's score will tell you how much better or worse they are than the median player, assuming an underlying normal distribution (reasonable).
Of course, scores will only be comparable if the average skill of all players remain constant. I would imagine this isn't true, but the drift over several decades is probably small.
Unless you start introducing some purely objective criteria for skill, which can never work, this is the best you can do. It's still way way better than a straight elo system though.
Rating distributions are often not normal because some subset of players study the game and take it more seriously resulting in a bimodal distribution. See [0] for an example in Chess.
Even without the bimodality, you wouldn't expect a normal distribution of ratings.
1. Assume that chess ability is normally distributed in the population.
2. Assume that people who are terrible at chess are more likely to stop playing chess than people who are successful.
Then you've sampled the underlying normal distribution mostly from the top end, and that new, highly skewed distribution is what you'll see when you measure everyone's rating.
Of course, scores will only be comparable if the average skill of all players remain constant. I would imagine this isn't true, but the drift over several decades is probably small.
Unless you start introducing some purely objective criteria for skill, which can never work, this is the best you can do. It's still way way better than a straight elo system though.