You have the ability to decide the how SBD works which literally gives you the ability to make or break this entire economy, and from what I read you may be getting even more powers with this next hf.
You overestimate our responsibility in this. Our current responsibility in relation to SBD currently is only that we report the price of STEEM (as oracles). We also have the power to approve/block hardforks which would change SBD, but that hasn't happened in a long while.
If you're referring to the peg discussions that have happened over the past 6 months - we have discussed at length various mechanisms to restore the $1 SBD peg, but there hasn't been much traction. The public outlash at "wanting to make the system work as intended" has scared many witnesses away from approving anything that would work towards actually affecting the price.
As far as I know, the only change for SBD proposed in the next HF is to increase the percentage at which SBD printing slows, which timcliff worked on.
Secret meeting or not, You are the face of the STEEM blockchain and voice of those who delegate resources to you. Id also like to point out that all single politicians(in the American Republic system which is really no different than DPOS at its core) do nothing more than talk about what they would like to see next, which is gets them voted in to the pool that allows them to vote on what actually happens next.
In some ways yes, in others no.
Politicians once elected have the powers to propose, ratify, and amend bills - which become law, and allow politicians to legally earmark funds (from tax payers) in order to establish agencies, build infrastructure, and ultimately enforce those laws.
Witnesses can also follow those same steps to propose, ratify, and amend changes to the blockchain, which essentially become "law" - but we can't earmark funding to actually make these things happen. For smaller projects we can fund them with our witness earnings, but that only goes so far. For anything beyond that, we are at the mercy of those with the purse strings (Steemit Inc with their massive "premine") and the decisions they decide to make, regardless of how we vote.
The system lacks checks and balances, funding appropriation, and has a sole power who is ultimately in control of the direction of Steem. As witnesses, we are gatekeepers that pretty much just prevent them from doing bad things to the community (which we do).
Thats only currently. If things go as planned EOS and STEEM are going to be the most valuable projects in crypto, potentially surpassing Ethereum in price. At that point things will be completely different in regards to funding as well as who is in control of marketshare. Steemit inc may currently have that large premine, but the purpose of that is so that they can get things done to further the project, which will inevitably cause their wealth to change hands. Were at a point where being too selfish isn't in their best interest on multiple levels; both competitively nor legally so I'd expect the core centralization of wealth issue to be short lived.