Disagreements on proposals will always happen, like in a democracy election, you might not like your president!
However, HIVE definitely works like a company. In a company, the more shares you own, the more your votes count. Your say in the company is proportional to your stake in it. Same with HIVE.
Yes, this leads to a few people calling the shots on witnesses and proposals. But the nice thing is that these people did not know each other before, and come from different places.
Also, we have shown during the STEEM takeover that when it really matters people band together and will vote out colluding whales (like the exchanges on STEEM).
The proposal system is not perfect but is better than having nothing. Some good proposals get overlooked because no one knows the Dev, this is sad, but is also logical. How can you trust a random guy?
What anyone can do though is start by providing value for free, and then become popular because of his work. This is exactly what @yabapmatt did and how he became the top witness.
Think of work on HIVE as an investment. Once you get the recognition, you get access to witness earnings and/or SPS earnings depending on the work.
Edit - I also think that once the price of HIVE goes high enough, witnesses should all pull their proposals, as witness earnings can become huge. We're not there yet though.