@bronko I think you are missing that the ownership of the vast majority (90%) of the validators have NO impact on governance. Only the validators voted on by the staked SPS community will have a bearing on the way things work going forward. This reward will be a much more modest 10% of the total and you will likely now get people that are community oriented (vs greedy egoists) in charge of protecting the community.

The reason I like this is the incentives to run a node for anyone is pretty much the same (with a small bump for the top few), so now people will vote for who helps/protects the community the best instead of worrying about those people being corrupted by the money they are earning.

Plus I love the vision of where they think this will go. If those nodes are ever worth $40,000, then I think our minds will be blown! :)