Thanks for this analysis! I think we also want to model the phenomenon of making the yellow brick road too easy when the pledge is too high. I think that’s the big reason why “just risk so much you’ll never dare derail” doesn’t work.
But there are definitely cases where it’s more binary: you hit the obvious minimum or you don’t. And those are cases where awesomeness maximization means a huge pledge that you’ll definitely never pay. So max awesomeness at min revenue, sadly for Beeminder. But I guess that’s why we have premium plans! 
I’d actually like to collect more case studies that violate my thesis here. I mean, I’d love to believe they’re rare and that maximizing revenue is unironically the best thing we can do for our users. But loving to believe something is a pretty big red flag so y’all should push back on this!