Thanks for the encouragement.
I think the hugely important difference between bitcoin miner cartels and DPOS is that token holders, in a single moment, can actually change their votes on who gets to be a BP. That can't happen with POW. Token holders have no say at all how things go. The motivational incentives are not inline. DPOS aligns those in a better way because it's the token holders that hold all the value for the chain. The "if you don't like it, sell your tokens" is good approach because bitcoin lost a ton of marketshare from people who still love bitcoin but didn't have a way to express their views on how it should work.
I don't think 100 people deciding is an accurate way to describe it. 21 BPs are (ideally) just securing the chain. If they are called to do something extraordinary by the community, then it's the token holders who are deciding by agreeing or disagreeing with the approach the BPs take.