That Steem example is interesting. I wonder what the basis for the voting system they have there, though.
Anyway, when you have a democratic (or otherwise subject to popular influence) institution which can do things like "print more money", forfeit some part of existing money, levy taxes etc. - then indeed it's an interesting and potentially positive-in-my-opinion cooperative pooling of resources. Of course then you have the opposite problem, which is the tyranny of the majority, but "you can't grab the rope at both ends".
https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560626) talks about the Steem/Hive split, and explains how the community democratically overrode the network owner's undemocratic decisions.