Great post! I agree that whales powering down can be a VERY good thing. I've always thought of the curation rewards process as a type of counter-gradient flow, i.e. in nature, things usually move from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration, like in diffusion processes. With finance, we see flows that move counter-gradient. For example, when it comes to debtors and creditors, wealth tends to flow from the poor to the wealthy, since the wealthy collect interest on the principal that they've loaned.

You might consider the curation rewards distribution to be a similar process. Those with large stakes are able to get larger rewards, increasing the gap between minnows and whales (if I understand things correctly). These processes can't continue indefinitely. In finance, typically there comes a point where open revolution tends to counter what had been perceived as excessive "counter-gradient" flows.

When whales power down some of their stake, they are in a way balancing out this effect, and personally, I believe this adds value to the platform because by selling their stake they are to a degree increasing the decentralization of the platform.

Just my 2 cents.