Sure but if it works, it is easily copied.
In theory yes. But some people think they know best (pride) or are bored to check what others are doing. I mean we should already be seeing analyses of users who get top curation returns (in something like a % relative to their SP) but we don't.
That doesn't make it sustainable or scaleable to more participants.
Indeed. The major issue of such a strategy would be vote overlaps due to too few decent + undervalued posts. But there is also the possibility of a posting boom, where we have a sharp increase in userbase and posts - and this coupled with a 5 vote limit (even as 500x 1%) would be unable to cover the board. Even multiples whales would be unable to cover it.
As for the SP rate, I've seen similar numbers with what you mention. We need some kind of visualization tool so that we can simply check past, running and future inflation rates, make calculations on SP inflation or Steem dilution from date A to date B, etc.
Perhaps a few small bounties would go a long way for getting tools like these...