Discount rate takes care of effect your effort can have on the future, relative to effect it will have on present, it has nothing to do with 'intrinsic utility' of things in the future. Future doesn't exist in the present, you only have a _model_ of the future when you make decisions in the present. Your current decisions are only as good as you can anticipate their effect in the future, and process Robin described in his blog post replay is how it can proceed, it assumes that you know very little and will be better off with just passing resources to future folk to take care of whatever they need themselves.