The false premise you're using is that smart contracts provide more utility than sound economic policy does.
The inflation curve in Bitcoin is considered sacred. In Ethereum, it's developer whim and EIP approval.
def calc_annual_reward(total_staked_eth):
return math.exp(31556926 / 384 * 64 / 31622 / total_staked_eth ** 0.5) - 1
This is the return rate for validators - this should be multiplied by the average online percentage, eg. 0.9 if average participation is 90%.
On top of that comes fee burning, which is inherently variable, but likely to lead to deflation at least initially. Extrapolating fees from the last 24 hours and assuming 10M eth is staked, the net result is a deflation of 1.3%.