As someone with capital the expected rate of return will have to be high to make it worth lending rather than just holding on to it in a deflationary situation.
A lot of western economies experienced the inflation side of the equation in recent history - see the 70s/80s in the us, when both the inflation rate and interest rate were very high. In reality the Real interest rate is generally less variable than either inflation or nominal rates.
Keeping the money in a hole in the ground gets you that return without taking on any risk, so when you're considering whether to invest your money in a potentially risky venture, you aren't going to care about the appreciation of money over the term of the loan.
My perspective is that if you want a return you consider the expected excess return over the risk-free return, and think about how much you're paying for that. Deflation increases the risk-free return you're comparing all investment opportunities with, so the number of opportunities with excess returns will diminish as that rate increases.
Rising real interest rates directly impact borrowers and their ability to borrow, as their debt burden increases without any changes to interest rates. Borrowers are therefore both less likely and less able to borrow. Lenders may simultaneously decide not to lend. Japan is a good case study and has suffered from both phenomena. But interest rates in Japan are very low and fell substantially as soon as the economy got stuck in a deflation rut:
The charts below are illustrative if you set them both from 1979 to now:
Could it be rather that because of the deflationary situation, the government tries to stimulate the economy with cheap money, and without that action, the natural rates of interest would be set by supply and demand and would be much higher?
Saying that the expected return would be higher is just the other side of saying it would be harder to find capital to start businesses.
> Lots of non-profitable companies today can keep surviving without doing any real good due to money being cheap.
This seems like a huge topic on its own. If there's an 'ideal' availability of money to ensure that companies are providing value, just switching to a supply limited currency is extremely unlikely to luck into selecting the right value. In fact, because it makes it harder to adjust things it makes it pretty much a certainty that at least at some point the wrong value will be selected.