Currently about $4 million leaves through inflation (at higher prices this year or last, the number was much higher, at one point as much as $300 million), into a market where there aren't and never were going to be investors looking to put $4-300 million in new money to work in second- or third-tier blockchain project with inherently questionable economics and plenty of reputational warts apart from its price performance. The result has been destroying 99% of the value to the point that not only has the reputation of the token as economically viable been utterly obliterated, but leaving the top 100 is a very real possibility, and making it even less likely to ever recover merely due to adding the negative effects of obscurity on top of demonstrated failure.

If one doesn't like the -99% from the peak number, one could instead look at the performance since 2016, when Steem had very roughly the exact same market value that it has today, yet Bitcoin was worth $10 billion and the entire cryptocurrency market maybe $15 billion (compared to $150 and $220 billion today). Either way it is hardly economics that have "worked", in any sense.

High inflation models that are invariant to demand just don't make sense given the inevitable feast and famine cycles of cryptocurrency markets. The crushing effects during famine cycles are just too great and likely lead to failure, which could have been avoided by just not forcing out that much supply. If Steem's high-inflation model was going to work as designed, it would had to have been an outlier from the start (when it wasn't yet a second- or third-tier project but had a chance to define itself ex nihilo) where the product was so compelling it led to massive positive feedback and unstoppable growth which forced the hand of investors into ignoring the inevitable self-destruction during a bear market (which, then, could have perhaps been self-fulfilling in avoiding the otherwise inevitable). That didn't happen for a variety of reasons, some of which (mostly clear execution gaffes) are easy to identify, but ultimately that doesn't matter in the here and now.

Furthermore, apart from the magnitude of the inflation being inherently unpalatable to investors absent some reason to view it as an outlier, the economics of wanting people to invest in a token that dilutes to pay for content they not only mostly don't want and mostly has no value to anyone (because it is produced by exploitative parasites almost entirely if not entirely for the purpose of extracting value), but even if they did want it, they could still access without investing, or, even without a formal model, if wanting direct influence, by tipping the creator.

Sorry I'm still not buying it.

(BTW, sorry didn't read your linked post. Too long and the formatting was painful to look at. But after three years of studying the economics of not only this blockchain but economic principles driving at least dozens of blockchain projects, I'm pretty comfortable I have at least a good bit of a handle on this. )

If people really want Steem to become something sustainable that further has a realistic chance to thrive they better start listening to people like @yabapmatt, @liberosist and others (including to a lesser extent myself) who have been pointing out the absurd economic contradictions long after Steem has proven itself insufficiently successful to be considered a rule maker. Absent that, well, it is certainly possible to continue to mine out more depreciating tokens via 'content' and there is always the possibility that any or all cryptos will experience absurd pumps (though with every delisting, and every further drop down in the rankings, any individual token, including this one, becomes less likely to participate). Other than that, the extent of denial at work can only make me shake my head, appreciate the lesson in practical human psychology, and focus on moving on from enormous financial losses which likely won't be recovered.