Decentralization theater means any system that produces not decentralization, but the appearance of decentralization.
Thank you for this - it was a delicious read.
A governed Ethereum, in the present state of the technology, might well choose to vet all contracts centrally before they started trading. Would this be a permanent feature? Certainly not -- it would be a way for the community to collectively define a good contract.
But blockchain governance would be considerably improved if the miners actually had a formal way to delegate their power to a structured institution that represented them.
Conclusions like these^ make me admire how much wisdom there is in BitShares DPOS. It still needs some tweaks but the fundamental concept is very solid.