Nah, man. They are there to get the curation rewards because big whales will vote on them.

This is wrong, or at least the people trying to do that are doing it wrong. These posts are too popular and too predictable for curation to be high return. Much of it is pushed into the before-5-minute zone where curation rewards are returned to the pool and the rest has high competition.

But this really begs the question. Why are the whales voting for it? That's of course where most of the rewards are coming from, not the smaller snipers. And the whales aren't getting good curation rewards either, due to all the front running.

Also, it protects the relative stake level of those voting accounts because the "authors" won't be getting inflation, or so it seems.

Okay, so this reflects lack of confidence that paying to (some) authors is actually a good/effective use of inflating investors funds. You do realize that's where the rewards come from, right?

IMO that is how the system is supposed to work. Stakeholders should vote to pay (some) authors when paying authors generates a positive return in the form of high value to Steem (or at least value that is aligned with rewards; small rewards may not need much value, in absolute terms), not "just because".

@burnpost is the default "none-of-the above" option. Arguably it should be built right into the system, but since it isn't, we provide it as a layer 2 solution.

How many people actually care about burning? There are literally trillions of USD out there, but that doesn't stop everyone and their dogs cashing out into it.

All about both supply and demand. There is huge demand for USD, so the high supply is tolerable. Other currencies (including, of course, one that starts with S), not so much.