I've been looking for an estimate of what return you can make by curating.
I would expect that it was as good or better than you can get just by delegating.
After all the people buying the lease need to earn a return on it so they must expect to be able to earn more from curation.
The other thing about voting and being active on the platform is that it causes others to vote on your content thus increasing your earnings from posting.
The more you have staked, the more interested people will be in earning your attention and potential vote.
So there are other financial returns from staking and being active that you haven't quantified.