That is not false at all, it is a general statement that is absolutely accurate. The top 20 witnesses are in fact being decided basically by a couple of the largest stake holders. That is a fact. All are receiving a vote from one of the top couple whales. That means that you have 2-3 whales basically dictating the direction of the entire platform. How do you not see that as a problem?
and also ultimately the way it is supposed to work.
Perhaps if the goal is to just have the richest person dictating things for the entire platform, then yes this is how it is supposed to work. However, many people have touted that having witnesses elected by the people helps decentralize the governing process, which it absolutely does.
As a counter example, if one malicious group were to acquire enough stake they could vote in all of the top 20 witnesses themselves, yes it would require a big stake, but it could be done in theory, they could vote in all 20 of "their" people and guide the entire platform in the direction they want or just crash the chain to watch it burn.
While that may sound extreme, there are people out there that do things just like that, in fact there are even some on this chain already.
Yes, that is unlikely, but it is still possible.
Reducing the number of witness votes per account makes that much harder to do.
I think the bigger concern might be people not voting at all
Yes, and that is because their vote literally makes no difference. If votes were maxed out at 10 or even better 5 it would allow for a much more democratic witnesses structure and it would make more votes 'matter' which in turn would likely incentivize more people to actually vote.
Not only that but it would also continually encourage witnesses to do things in the best interest of their voters, a la more of the community at large, which isn't exactly what we have going on right now. As it stands now, in most cases, you just have to cater to a couple of the largest accounts and you are in.
I very much question your assumptions about how a smaller number of votes would work. The total vote weight would fall dramatically and people with a lot of stake, despite fewer votes, would then still have enormous influence over the now-lower weight totals.
Consider the extreme case of only one vote. I'm reasonably certain that every single top witness in that system would still have at least one very large stakeholder vote supporting them, including some large stakeholders who would split their account in order to have more flexibility in voting. It is even quite possible that some large stakeholders, or possibly all of them, would be able to place one or more witnesses into the top list with their votes alone. That is bad, not good.
It is far from clear to me that more votes favors larger stakeholders in any significant way; everyone simply has the same increased opportunity to express support for more candidates, including smaller stakeholders doing so. For example, with only a few votes, as a smaller stakeholder if your first few choices have no real chance of being voted in, then you have to choose abandoning them to have immediate influence between candidates all of whom you may dislike but are credible current candiates. With more votes you can continue to support your first choices (who may then gain additional support over time) and also have immediate influence on the margin. That is the sort of strategic gaming that approval voting aims to (and largely does) eliminate.
There is no way to avoid someone with a million (or even a thousand) times more stake having enormously more influence, and if you could that would be bad because it would mean that an attacker will less stake would therefore gain more influence.
At a minimum, this proposal would require a far stronger argument than what you are making that it would have the beneficial effects you suggest (like an actual paper, with proofs, which considers among other things, strategies like account splitting).
In the absence of that, the baseline assumption I'm going with is that approval voting with unlimited (or at a minimum least >20 votes) is best here in order to get witnesses that are 'acceptable' to the largest amount of stake (which is both a desirable governance and security property)
BTW, remember, most of the largest stakeholders currently vote for more than 20 candidates (most vote for close to 30 and ideally the limit would be higher). It is then the smaller stakeholders who decide among the candidates who are acceptable to the larger stakeholders (and also vice-versa, because there is no inherent ordering to the votes, but this may be less clear to you without really thinking it through).
Again, yes, the largest have the most influence (and when the disparity in stake is very large, the disparity in influence is as well), but all votes absolutely do count.
Under your proposal this would still be the case, they would just need to split their stake into 4 or 5 accounts. The total vote weights necessary to get in the top 20 would fall dramatically, so the total stake required would correspondingly fall.
Since when has "an actual paper with proof" been needed for anything on here?!
Sheesh.
Even in your argument of one vote per account (Which I am not advocating) you make my entire point. You say that the 20 largest stake holders would be deciding the top 20 in that scenario... Ok fine, well guess what, then we at least have the direction of the platform dictated by 20 people rather 2 like we have now... which is exactly my point.
The whole point is making the witness selections more democratic and decentralized than they are now, which is exactly what this would do, I am not sure why you are so against that to be honest.
No 20 accounts, not people.
I disagree that's what it would do. I'm not against decentralized nor democratic (though in a stake-weighted system 'democratic' is always somewhat of a misnomer).
The point that should be clear by now is that in terms of voting system, single non-transferable vote is actually quite terrible. (Everyone is forced to vote only for candidates right on the margin or 'waste' their vote, and this is especially harmful to the influence of smaller stakeholders, not larger.) Yet, here you are claiming that it would be better, which should be a clue that your mental model is off.
I am claiming that having more people deciding who the top 20 witnesses are is better than having less people deciding who they are.
At 5 votes per, even if the largest 2 accounts split their stakes into 2-3 accounts, they wouldn't be able to solely control the entire 20 by themselves, which is pretty much what is happening now and my entire point.
And if they split into 4 account instead of 3, then they could. This is not a solid foundation upon which to build an entire voting system, nor an argument for a voting system.
BTW, are you aware that many if not most of the largest stakeholders already have multiple accounts? They mostly use the proxy feature and one set of votes, but that could easily change even without moving stake around at all, and it can also be moved.
And I am claiming that all voters have significant influence over this even today. Having a large number of votes helps this not hurts, as I said, because even medium and smaller stakeholders can vote for #21, #22, etc. and try to push them into the list, vote for #20 and try to keep them in (or equivalently not vote for #20 and thereby try to push them out), while also continuing to support their favorite choices.
Expecting the largest stakeholders to not have a huge, huge say over the top 20 list is unrealistic no matter what. These are and always will be arguments over the margin. I'm reasonably (though I'll admit not 100%) sure that approval voting with a large (or unlimited) vote limit does better on this, not worse.
Only if they had enough stake, but it would require MORE stake for them to control the entire top 20 witnesses by limiting the votes per account to 5 than it does currently.
For example, an 8 million steem account splitting stake into 4 accounts now only gives them 2 million per account to vote with, a number that is much easier to match by other voters on other candidates, than matching the current 8 million total, like there is now.
Overall I am not doubting or claiming that the largest stake holders should not have significant influence, but when we have 2 of the largest stake holders basically deciding all of the top 20 witnesses (who are in charge of dictating the direction of the entire steem ecosystem) we need to adjust the model.
That's simply not true because other accounts would also have fewer votes and end up spreading their votes more thinly. The overall vote weight needed to reach the top 20 would decline by about a factor of 6 (assuming most of the stake deploys 30 votes and would deploy 5 given your proposal, which is close to correct, if not 100% accurate), which means high stakeholders with a split of 1/4 would, in immediate terms, have an easier time getting their preferred candidates in.
Of course, 'immediate terms' is never the correct analysis anyway (and your earlier point about other changes not having real papers and proofs is true in most cases–although the curve change does have some–but they all still have and have had extensive, if somewhat informal, analysis and discussion that goes beyond the first level analysis of assuming that nothing else changes and considers at least reasonable suppositions about how behavior might change), but you see the basic idea.
And I flat out disagree this is the case. What we actually have is:
a) witnesses voted by at least one of those stakeholders who are not in the top 20
b) witnesses voted by one of the top two who who still wouldn't be in the top 20 (in a static model) even if the other top-two also voted for them
c) witnesses not voted by at least one the top two, who are in the top 20
d) not a single top 20 slot accessible by a combination of the two largest stakeholders alone
e) at least one top 20 witness not voted by either of the top two stakeholders
f) at least one other top 20 witness who would still be there (in a static model) without any top-two votes.
g) etc.
The voting results are determined by a combination of votes from the largest stakeholders as well as the others. According to (d), which has always been the case AFAIK, without a lot of votes from other stakeholders, the top two stakeholders can not even come close to electing even a single witness at all, much less all witnesses. Yes, the largest have a lot of influence, but they are not 'dictating' anything. That's a combination of conspiracy theory, misunderstanding how voting works, and/or trolling.
You are confusing 'most top witnesses have a vote from a top stakeholder' with 'top witnesses are decided by top stakeholders'. These may seem close enough for rhetorical purposes but in terms of how voting actually works they are very different. It would actually be odd and probably dysfunctional if most top witnesses didn't have the support of most large stakeholders, including the largest.