"Let’s say X, Y, Z goes into 100% passive staking, it’ll effectively reduce the rewards pool for the rest of the remaining voters."
That same X,Y,Z is already going to "passive staking" when people are selling their votes to bid bots. Not directly, but it's the same effect. But now they also mess up the purpose Steem originally had as Trending is filled by posts that were promoted... So I'd rather split these groups to two rather than forcing everyone to become passive staker
The fact that you can get your post to trending page by using upvote bots creates a real demand for steem. Since a lot of people buy steem just for that purpose. If it wasn't for that and the dapps build on steem why would you want to own it? Promoting a post the old fashioned way is not cost effective. Then you can better advertise on google adwords.
It does create demand for Steem and in my opinion it also decreases it. Our trending consists of only ads these days, rather than content people have personally deemed good after reading them. But I'm over this topic.