You believe your power gives you the right to subjectively determine value of posts, irregardless of the value others see in them

I believe that we all stakeholders vote and then the blockchain determines the reward at the end of 7 days. If you don't believe that, you don't understand how Hive works.

monopoly on stake owned by the few

There's no monopoly, or anything remotely like it. Anyone can buy or earn stake and mine is less than 1%. With that comes the right to vote on rewards, along with the burden of having your stake diluted to pay for rewards. It goes hand in hand.