While your criticisms of Sun and Steem are on point and factual, your claim Hive is decentralized is false. It is more decentralized than Steem, but ~45% of stake is held by ~a dozen whales. It is they that govern Hive, and that is only an order of magnitude improvement on Steem's extant circumstances.

That is not enough decentralization of governance.

The bare fact is that as long as stake alone is how governance is effected, Hive remains vulnerable to accumulation of stake, which is shown to inevitably occur historically, and Hive will eventually suffer the exact takeover that Steem has.

It's a mathematical certainty.

Additionally, I have long noted your facility with deceptive phrasing, and you reveal that propensity again here. All Steem extant has been mined, except for that produced as rewards, which is the result of inflation of mined stake. Since Hive simply reproduces the stake in Steem, the distribution of stake on Hive is only different than on Steem presently because we have jammed the founder's mined stake into the HPS, and on Steem Sun Yuchen holds it personally.

Currently on Hive ~45% of stake is held by whales, and almost all of that stake was mined exactly as the stake Sun holds now.

I cannot simply ignore your disingenuity that perpetuates the existential threat to Hive that exists right now. If Hive does not modify how governance of the blockchain is effected, it will be taken over by whoever gains enough stake. The month delay in powerup only protected us during the fork from stake held by exchanges, and is not a meaningful mitigation of this vector of threat.

While our present oligarchs have demonstrated they are committed to free speech, the fact of the matter is none of them will live forever, and inevitably the stake they possess and manage according to their preference for censorship resistance will eventually be used to influence Hive governance by others according to their views.

Sooner or later, unless we change how we elect witnesses, Hive will fall to exactly the 51% attack that has successfully taken over Steem.

Edit: I here invite both @smooth and @pal to justify their flags with statements that support their apparent disagreement with this statement. Do not appear to be cowards afraid of flags. Have the courage of your convictions, as I have. If you have no case, your flags are indictments of your corruption by the oligarchy.

I will immediately withdraw my vote for @smooth's witness, as I had not thought him either corrupt or a coward until now. In neither case can I support his witness any longer. I suggest all those voting for it consider this flag, and his reply to this post - or lack of it.