It's funny reading threads like this where people get outright angry at the existence of Litecoin.  The people with 5 stars by their name won't tell you the reason they're angry about it, but the reason is, they're scared a network won't function solely with transaction fees unless it has a monopoly on the entire market, and even then, it's still sketchy.  What I see happening in the long run is, eventually this model might prove to be faulty, but nobody will be able to gain consensus to change it due to being called Keynesians.  Some lower coin with a minimum block reward that never goes below X units will probably have to lead the way until the top coins are forced to change.

I don't want to be called  Keynesian as much as anyone else, but I foresee the amount of coins lost per year if cryptocurrency ever becomes mainstream to be a huge number.  People will lose passwords or die all the time with encrypted wallets and those coins will be lost forever.  The number lost per year is going to be at least 1% in my opinion, so having a coin supply that always emits new coins by a minimum of 1-2% wouldn't be a big deal.

The real conspiracy theory in this situation, would be if some government entity already knew this model wasn't viable, and tries to lure everyone into a one world currency using Austrian economics as bait, then pulls the rug out on them.  I don't consider always having a small, minimum block reward being a bait and switch, but there's no telling the scope of the bait and switch government regulation could pull off.

There's also the option that the miners themselves are going to vote themselves a raise in the form of minimum block reward, and everything will be quietly settled that way.