Whales are not 'leaders' they are influential in managing the platform and that's a huge difference. They do not directly effect my behaviour.
Whales who vote for witnesses are "forever leaders" as long as they have their stake, they are King Makers and that is actually more powerful in many ways than being a "leader" which is why I called it "forever leaders". They make the Kings that others have to follow(block chain rules/upgrades/updates/etc).
you're always a guest at someone else's party and if you don't like the music, you either ask for some new tunes or you go find another party.
Exactly, while here I will advocate for a far better model, POS Ethereum will change the entire way people see decentralization, Justin Sun could not have done what he did on Steem, on Etheruem POS his stunt he pulled would have lost him all of his stake automatically.
Sounds way more centralized than on Hive, mate. It's pure POS, so the rich will literally just get richer. Here 15% goes to HP holders and 10% to witnesses while the majority goes to authors and curators, do you think the orcas and whales we have here today who most likely didn't buy in or use hardware to mine would exist on ETH? Not saying whales who hold their HP don't grow nicely alongside everyone else but anyone has a chance here earning their way up. Look at aggroed, marky, tarazkp, etc. Hell even I didn't buy any stake until after the 2018 bull run. None of that would've been possible on any other chain, going POS won't help that so it's really annoying when people bring these propositions in their arguments against Hive when there's literally no other blockchain out there offering the same opportunities to "non-whales".