It's interesting, and a certain rabbit hole of logic. * The person around 100 years in the future is likely dead, so any utility is gained from using it before

It's interesting, and a certain rabbit hole of logic. * The person around 100 years in the future is likely dead, so any utility is gained from using it before they die. * Perfect capital markets which price in the future, for example, financial intermediaries paying you to work rather than the employer itself, ceteris paribus more efficient than current compensation schemes, on the condition you get paid 100% of the payroll if becomming CEO and pay back the bank, do not exist. * Tragedy of the Commons - gain political/property rights to an unequal share of common property, then profit from this 'capital' right. * Or an example close to my home, of a port and railway constructed on Tsar bonds with maturities of 100+ years which spurred the development, and chaos, in Northeast China, and turned pretty worthless with revolution and occupation. At the time, one of the most certain investments in the world. What is 'value'? In the short term dictionary definition it is the price someone is willing to pay. Perhaps a tulip, or a cotton, or fur, jacket - the 'value' of these has varied far more than discount factors could determine. Much debate has gone into this for millennia. We simply don't know the future. In retrospect, the long term return on capital is the long tern discount factor. But we do know it isn't priced-in efficiently, as we know we don't know what the future will be. Future value is a dependent variable. Though I am a fan of long term trends for short term things, outside of a couple of centuries, long term trends tend to fail, and 'this time it's different' even if drawn over the past half century doesn't work unless not a lot else is changing.