i don't know about that, i don't see all witnesses are in one line, i know that they are in competition to climb up the ladder to earn better blocks rewards.
however, even witnesses voting system isn't fair, it looks like it's all about the SP there too, while i think it should be about numbers, but still it's risky to do that, because a witness can create many fake accounts and vote for himself,
so again, witnesses are controlled by the whales (Steem lobbyists)
it's really confusing, it's a mess and needs to be organized
Making it about numbers will make the system much easier to game. You just make more and more puppet accounts. And if it's about puppet accounts it's again about money, just not money invested in the platform.
The good thing about everything on the steem blockchain being connected to SP is the fact that this incentivizes investing in the platform and holding a stake in it. I think it is absolutely fair for stakeholders to have a say proportional to their stake.
I don't think the current system is a mess, but I also don't think it's decentralized in the exact same way many people are making it out to be.