Vice-versa means the same for Steemit platform. It will become a centralized network. It will become, as you adequately put it, a kingdom with one ruler and a strong team of oligarchs who will conveniently support each other for more land, more power, more influence. In fact, it is in a way like that. The fact that this will put an end to 80% whale & friends voting on each other's, many times useless content in terms of information, posts and break this loop of endless SBD ping-pong, will heavily raise the commitment and dedication of true content creators and skim away the opportunistic behavior.
I've joined Steemit for the simple fact that I thought this is a meritocracy. But in fact, the sad truth, it is a communist party who let the masses think they are something. But they don't give a rat's ass about them. They just masquerade this by forming the so-called curation guilds, which in fact they act as a money laundering machine.
The promise of money is appealing, but the lie about decentralization could spell the end of Steemit.
So keep it real.
As a side note: there's an user how post flying planes. The ugliest kind. Augmented by some hectic words. There is ZERO ( 0 ) content. Yet he is acquiring over-evaluated SBD in great numbers. Yes, it is like that. And countless examples. Soon, these little things will turn this into HI5 or Myspace. Dead dinosaurs.