You are only considering the big time players/investors but we should look at it as a whole. If there are no incentive to stake then most of the content creators will sell off their HIVE as soon as they recieve it.
The governance of the blockchain will again go in the hands of big investors and not evenly distributed.
I can understand that people with big stakes are earning well with auto-votes but that's why they invested.
Another point to consider is if we reduce down the inflation and curation rewards, and HIVE price remain the same? It would be eventually a loss of their investment.
Posted using Dapplr
The counterpoint to this argument is that the same inflation that's allowing users to benefit despite the price not increasing, can also be contributing to the price not increasing. And that "price not increasing" can lead outsiders who are not aware of the inflation payments to think that the coin is going nowhere fast (which is detrimental to existing investors too, of course).