Bitcoin halving may be its undoing. We did consider that concept, but feel steem would become nothing if rewards went to 0. It is always easier to reduce inflation than to increase it. Bitcoin went for 6+ years with much higher than 10% inflation. I think we can let Steem ride for 6+ years with 10% inflation and see how it goes.
Monetary policy is not an exact science.
It's not an exact science, but a long term inflation level at 9.5% without some promise of a decrease doesn't sound very attractive. If Bitcoin didn't have some promise of a reduction over time, I don't think it would have been successful.
There are many ways you could reduce this inflation by burning coins.
The promoted features does just that, advertisement in the platform could be bought for steem and burnt, subscription, steemit gold , hero status,etc..and all kind of special treatment could be bought on the platform by burning steem. You could probably reduce the inflation down a lot with these.
There is so much left to innovate, pretty awesome with open-source. :)