I'm not saying the whales are so entitled to the rewards pool, but they certainly treat it as if they were, and stake-weighting does entitle them to it, because it enables them to extract it. They would be offended by a reduction in their ROI, and Stinc serves the market, which is almost the whales alone. I believe this is why HF21 will include EIP, which doubles curation rewards and halves author rewards, as well as taxes the pool to fund development. It also increases flags able to be flown by 25% of VP, of which whales have the vast majority. Flagging returns rewards to the pool, and whales then can claim most of those rewards too.
I have noted often that these whales were not experienced investors skilled at increasing the value of investment vehicles and attaining capital gains, and the code enables extraction of rewards via stake-weighting, rather than enabling capital gains. I have even speculated that given a declining market cap, user retention, and token price, the whales face diminishing returns from their business model of extracting ~90% of rewards, and that EIP is intended to allow a last gasp of profitable extraction that leaves Steem no longer viable, and allows the whales to move on to the next target.
Since their stake is necessary to extract the rewards, they are unwilling to abandon it until it becomes worthless, and the permanent blockchain is evidence that can be used against them in the event of tort actions - or more dire legal actions, since proof of death threats, extortion, sexual harassment, and more remains recorded there. Only if the witnesses quit and wipe their drives will that evidence be deleted. Without substantial income from Steem, witnesses will have little incentive to maintain the blockchain.
This is speculative of course, but the whales being Stinc's market, and extracting the vast majority of rewards is not. Given how disingenuous many of them are in order to attain those rewards, I am confident that were Stinc to reduce their ROI by massive delegation, there would be hell to pay in Austin.