My take on the matter - 1.5% increase in SP remains to be an arbitrarily low number used to make it seem like there's a point to holding SP. I'd venture that curation works can easily top this 1.5% increase per year just by using the platform, and increase in curation rewards is the better reason to accumulate SP. A 1.5% increase is also negligible for the passive stakeholder, in which such capital could work way better elsewhere if that's the case. The number is so small that if removing that could net the entire network an extra ~$800,000 per year to channel to stuff that are more functional than a placebo-like perk, why not? It doesn't have to be raising the wages for workers or allocating budget for marketing, etc. Can be anything at all, especially stuff that makes Steemit special. Might not be a popular opinion since they're quite costly, but I really think that relieve efforts / charities / meetups / Steemfest type of deals are something to be reckoned with.