I have to agree with you that Steem Inc founding members and miners have too much control over both who witnesses are and where rewards go (including presumably back to themselves, though will wait for data on that claim). I believe this happened in HF 17/18 where Ned swooped in and changed his witness votes depending on who was adopting the HF.

While it's totally fine to use your votes however, this kind of concentration of power makes the idea that Steem as a DAO a farce. @demotruk maybe you were right about the idea that voting can be corruption, at least at the highest level of stakeholding.