I am reading through the following article with much interest, and I am finding it fascinating how much dirty tricks are going on in the Bitcoinsphere:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/blockstream-won-say-bitcoin-miner-in-blocksize-debate/
I think, as a principle of governance, Steem is benefiting a lot from its ultimately meritocratic voting system and its complete public transparency. The developers are keeping the debates on the blockchain, for the most part, and although there certainly is still quite a bit of antagonism flying around, indeed the very voting system itself, and the value of the currency as well, are having an effect of keeping things civil, and focused on real results.
Nothing on Steem can be memoryholed. There is thousands of witness nodes keeping a cryptographically secured copy of everything everyone has posted. Steem is an open, corporate environment, and personally, I suspect that with additional features, control over development directions will be handled and moderated by the voting system. Every Steemian has a publicly verifiable stake in the platform, and in corporate governance, this is how the nefarious attacks such as sybil, bullying tactics, and others, cause democracy to be a total and utter failure.
Votes about the directions of development directly weight according to the stake of the voter. Dash's governance system is somewhat similar, and it is notable also that Steem uses a similar system in its Witnesses as Dash's MasterNodes.
I think the conclusion you can get to with this is pretty clear. Proof of work gives you indelible, reliable records. But it does not moderate behaviour by itself. Proof of stake is a tool for governance. It destroys, especially given enough time, all vectors for gaming a democratic system. Or perhaps it is even wrong to call it democratic.
One of the things I am finding very interesting in watching all these things is this: Steem, and several others such as Dash, are using stake based systems for moderating their voting systems, and the rate at which these platforms are advancing by the metric of market capitalisation is quite stunning.
In well established and effective systems of jurisprudence, such as the old English system of Equity, there is a Maxim:
Sacrifice is the measure of credibility
This may seem opaque at first to anyone who has never heard of it before, but it is the Principle underpinning the system of voting used in corporations, and what is implemented, and I think refined, in Steem. Those with the most to lose, are the ones who benefit most from behaving in honest and transparent ways, and incur the greatest cost when they act in malicious, manipulative and dishonest ways.
Thus, while it may seem, when you have a small stake, that the judgements of big players is 'unfair', in fact, as the mechanism plays out, as a small player, you can learn more and improve your reputation from making mistakes more easily, but the bigger your stake becomes, the more onerous the obligation to be socially responsible becomes.
In fact, I think that it is fair to call this stake weighted system of voting Meritocracy. It could be expanded to the size of a whole society, and it would be a system of governance that consistently produces great results. In fact, I believe that where similar systems have been in place in history, this principle has underpinned their great success, in the notable examples of the 290 years of polycentric law in Iceland, and though it is not possible as yet to be fully sure exactly how it operated, in the ancient city of Jericho, which in 9000 years worth of layers of archaeology, show no signs of the existence of a violence-enforced state monopoly.
In the latter case, there is some documents still that can be found, that discuss the legal system of the ancient Jews. Prior to the institution of a monarchy, they operated by a meritocratic system based on the practise of a well understood, and simple body of law. By the use of logic, judges (rabbis) were subject to judgement upon their judgement, and by outlawing the use of political scheming tactics, and requiring the jurisprudence to either adhere to the laws, or be dismissed, it prevented manipulative tactics from coming into play.
The system of voting here and at Dash and becoming increasingly popular, works in part on similar principles, creating an economic regulation system that weakens the various methods of corruption and manipulation that most other governance systems eventually fall because of.