This isn't really surprising at all, if you understand time preference, which obviously you do not. The revenue stream is only infinite if you defer consumption forever, and no mortal being can rationally be willing to wait forever. Eventually you and everyone you have ever cared about will be dead, and beyond caring about any further revenues. Any production past that point might as well not exist.

Consider this: under what circumstances would eating the goose be valued more highly than twenty years worth of golden eggs? Starvation, perhaps? Would it really makes sense to preserve an unending supply of golden eggs at the expense of starving in the present?

Put as simply as I can manage, you aren't qualified to tell anyone how much they should value future goods relative to present goods, any more than you are qualified to dictate any other form of economic preference to others, and yet that is exactly what you are trying to do with demurrage. You yourself act in a manner which is consistent with having a positive time preference--since you haven't starved yet, you clearly do not always choose to defer consumption--and yet you fail to perceive or understand this unchangeable fact of mortal existence and call it "irrational".

And yet, it is a wasteful act, precisely because it isn't the first thing worthy of funding. You are diverting present resources from high-ROI investments to a low-ROI investment. This is wasteful.


Compound interest doesn't reduce your return in the slightest. It just means that there was a better alternative. Put another way, you could have put $7 in the bank at 5% interest (i.e. into other investments earning 5% annual ROI, as opposed to the tree at a mere 2.3%), and gotten the same $1000 in 100 years for your grandchild, and still had $93 left over in the present to spend or invest as you choose.