The economics that you pointed out can be simplified to the fact that there is excessive steem out there right now. In a normal economy that operates on an inflationary currency, they would aim to reduce inflation. In the case of STEEM, inflation is programmed and can only be changed with a HF. Its sort of like playing the role of the FEDs. Not everyone would agree with this method since it sort of ties into the whole centralized idea, but none of the less it is the traditional model to control the downward spiral of a currency.

What can we do to combat this if we aren't willing to change inflation rate?

Reduce the supply by adding new users? Thats a secondary problem. The primary problem to solve is why people arent willing to power up their liquid steem to constrict the supply.

One reason is steemit inc is dumping hard and the other reason is inflation is high enough that it becomes a free piggy bank for people to extract money out of. All bad things that can be controlled by the classic method of changing the inflation rate, but then the rewards for the honest users dry up. Quite frankly, its a double edge sword no matter how you cut it and while you can be optimistic that the growth can save us, the reality is that we have no mechanism to stabilize the steem economy right now, its purely free market.