I don't entirely agree, I think there should be a place for inflation but not being totally dependent on it.
Generally, posts that organically grab mass attention will continue to grab more attention once it's popular. That's why the term "viral" was once used. Not everything pushed to the front page will be viral.
Let's say you have a book and want to advertise it in Steem blockchain, would you advertise on a trending post that has $200 in reward, but has no comments or resteem,
Or would you rather put your ad in a post that has only $1 due to low SP voters but recently received 1000 real comments and resteems and continue to get more interaction?
If you're selling any product you would know that traffic is valuable. And 1000 viewers with medium to low income is better than one very rich viewer
The rich may buy one book, but 1000 people may buy 1000 books.
That's why Steem need to reward posts that get more attention and more engagement because that's where the real money is.
(Example of paywall from yours.org)
Now imagine if Steem allowed you to have posts' paywall that people can buy to view the rest of the content
And what if the trending page was based on the number of times a post has been bought with an algorithm that prevents bots and self payments
What if Steem value was based on content being bought and subscriptions the like of patreon?
What if the reward pool algorithmically reward content that do well in terms of donations?
Now this is really a content/engagement based blockchain that we really want. I envy Lino blockchain for striving to become all that Steem failed to do. Except too bad they are only focusing on video content.