I've heard suggestions to get rid of the base token content reward pool before. The idea is that the continuous high inflation is not good for the token price. You could consider the shrinking market cap to be an indication that the stakeholders are not getting enough value in exchange for the tokens distributed.
It is a tempting thought. Back in 2017 when I was first introduced to Steem, I told friends with whom I was having conversations online about Steem and how we should all move over to Steem to do what we were doing anyway and get paid for it. All I got was blank stares. The whole idea just didn't compute. It was apparently too good to be true. Their internal theories of value couldn't be reconciled with the notion of such rewards. It was partly fear, too. One guy said then and later repeated that he was convinced "the authorities" would eventually put a stop to the entire space.
What I think is that the value hasn't been there in the first place, apart from speculative value given to HIVE/STEEM by altcoin speculators owing to the fact that the coin(s) are widely traded (=speculated on) on many cryptocurrency exchanges globally. The user base has simply been orders of magnitude too small for the kind of high token valuations we've seen to be justifiable from a value investment perspective. We could say we've seen an unprecedented influx of venture capitalist funds.
What is the real source of value then? Same as usual. This is all about the attention economy with censorship resistance and platform ownership as major selling points. The platform is immature, however. Many of the tools such as easy signups have been missing so far but that issue is currently being addressed by the OpenOrchard team and some others.
I was completely against removing the content reward pool on Steem because I saw that Steem Power distribution was dangerously centralized. I was right. Hive is a different, however. The distribution is much healthier here.
I wouldn't want the base token content reward pool eliminated at present, though. I think all other avenues should be pursued first. I would not declare Proof-of-Brain dead, yet, until the potential of improvements such as easy signups and more efficient content discovery have been exhausted first. Besides, the base token content reward pool is shrinking all the time anyway. In about fifteen years from now, the total inflation rate will drop to a paltry 1% of per year as opposed to about 8% at present. Also, I don't think removing the pool in a single hard fork would sit well with the community.
(The price of HIVE is still so high that I would consider using any other platform proof of brain death. I'm sure we can find more early adopter types who grok this platform when given a chance. We must double down on our marketing efforts.)