RE: Locking stake for 100% passive income, improving content, helping apps
It is no secret I think that we are moving toward a position where the Steem pool will no longer be distributed to post payouts as SMTs will be distributed instead.
If we want to do this, far better to disable the content reward pool and lower inflation. The result will be an improvement to the price trend (all else being equal 8% inflation induces an 8%/year downward tilt in the price trend, which looks worse on charts and scares away investors) and further the lower inflation will be more easily understood by investors as attractive compared with the "high inflation, but you can use this secret feature to get paid back if you pull your coins off an exchange [which many investors don't want to do] and lock them up [which many investors also don't want to do]" model.
SMTs can experiment with inflation and distributing rewards while Steem itself has a strong and attractive economic base layer and native coin underlying it all.
It obviously (and mentioned in other comments) requires thoughts into the details and numbers to find the correct balance points (I am far too unqualified for this) but in the interim, it is a partial reset of the rewards pool and allows for 50/50 and flag cost adjustments to have greater and more balanced effects on behavior.
Personally, I am unlikely to lock up my stake (or at least most of it) and that would be even more unlikely with 50/50 curation and the ability to affect content order through both voting and flagging. In my opinion, my voice in developing a healthy view of Steem is worth more to my holdings than a 10x vote return.