As a customer I would definitely want the recognition. Commercially, I don't think it makes that much sense but it all depends on the population profile. Take you as an example, you are lifetime gold with QF but when was the last time you were onboard. I would relax and not worry about renewing my status YoY (not that 50K is much) and might focus my attention on other airlines.

Having said that, another way of looking at it is I would strive to retain status for the next x number of years to guarantee myself lifetime and this is guaranteed revenue for the airline.