If you took $1 in year zero, and invested it in an interest-bearing instrument which yielded 2% annually, you would have $213,474,546,813,934,272 today. This does not take inflation into account :).
No interest-paying instrument survived that long. It almost makes you think that period devaluations are a must-have.
That's only assuming zero risk. An investment with risk so low to survive two millennia can safely yield 0%.
>An investment with risk so low to survive two millennia can safely yield 0%.
If risk-free assets garnered 0% interest rates, then the U.S. Treasury would not have to pay a real rate of return on its debt.
In reality if you have a 2% yielding bond taken out in year zero you'd have $40.30 of accrued interest plus the $1 principal of the bond.
To put it another way: On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone [or any investment] drops to zero.
Suddenly many of the bad things we are trying so hard to prevent seems not so bad anymore: disease, war, hunger and restrictions on immigration.
So, people dying of old age does not limit population growth rate to less than 2%.