As for your criticism that these two projects suck up voting power, there is a ton of available whale voting power still that is not being used on Steemit - go out and get some.

This is very likely wrong mathematically. Yes there is more voting power unused, but the reward pool is fixed and divided up according to how much of (and how) the power is used. If hardly any voting power were being used, then significant changes would be possible by bringing in more, but once the denominator is large enough, further significant shifts are unlikely (putting aside something extreme like using the 'steemit' account).