Why does EOS fail as a blockchain worthy of respect? A simple, but subtle response: People are people. I could end it there, but I'll explain my position in more detail. That way if you disagree with me, you'll have to show me the flaw in my logic rather than calling out FUD. Because I don't take roasting coins lightly.

Here's the simplified argument in case you don't feel like reading:

1. Money is an universal instrument. It inherently is not good or evil.
2. People perform good and bad actions in order to accomplish personal goals
3. Money is used by people to accomplish those goals.
4. Therefore, money can be and is used by individuals to perform good and bad actions.
5. Since money is universal, everybody wants to get more of it.
6. Any platform that generates money will attract good and bad actors, all self serving in some way.
7. People are bound to manipulate and corrupt a model if it helps them acquire additional money.
8. Thus, any governance model that is reliant on cryptocurrency that is also treated as money is corruptible.
9. EOS's model of governance fails as it can not be sound money and a good model of governance at the same time.

If you disagree with the conclusion (9), then it's up to you to argue against one of the earlier points. Note that I'm not saying the blockchain governance isn't impossible, rather, given our current developed models, any idea of governance doesn't really make a lot of sense with any token currently out there.

So, let's start with the first point. Money is a universal instrument. Which seems like a reasonable point to make. What is money? Most generally speaking money is any arbitrary object that serves as a medium of exchange. Money is simply an object that a group of people agree to use in exchange for other things.

Why is money universal? Because everyone has a use for an arbitrary object that can be used in exchange for goods and services. Since everyone and anyone can do stuff with money, the instrument itself is a universal one.

This contrasts with non-universal tools that not everyone has a use for. For example, a car or a computer. Not everyone with have a use for things, but since money can be used for exchange for all sorts of instruments it derives it's universal value from the ability to be used to obtain individual-specific instruments.

But money isn't inherently good or evil, good or evil comes from the intentions of human beings. Money doesn't have intention. Money is inanimate. The intentionality of any action comes from the agent performing the action. And in our case, this agent is a person. And we come to the fatal flaw in current blockchain governance models, people are people.

People are not inherently good or evil, but they perform actions to enhance their own lives or enrich the lives of other human beings they care about. And people will perform actions that achieve their personal goals of enhancing themselves and their people regardless of potential conflicts of interest that may arise with other groups of people.

People are never placed in a situation where they will never perform an action where a conflict doesn't arrive between their own interests and the interests of other human beings. And thus, depending on your perspective and moral codes, people may be performing evil actions or non-evil actions.

Thus, people will either perform good or evil actions in order to accomplish their goals. A mother might steal to feed for her children. A predatory loan shark may denote large amounts of money to help children with cancer because his brother died of cancer. Conflicts between the interests of another individual and one's own personal goals are to be expected.

Since money is a universal instrument, people will use money in order to achieve their goals. This also means that sometimes money will fuel good actions and sometimes they will be used in less than ideal ways. Money is used both to grow us and used to destroy others. Money allows us to accomplish great feats but at the same time allows people to commit tremendous atrocities.

The fact of the matter is that money will be used by individuals to reach their goals however responsible or irresponsible those goals may be with respect to other individuals. And since money is so flexible in the ways it can be used and because it can be traded for almost anything, everyone is open to obtaining money. Both good people and bad people.

Since everyone is after money to achieve their own personal goals, you would expect any platform generating money to attracts all sorts of individuals towards it. This includes good and bad actors. Because money is universal and people are looking for as many ways they can to get their hands on such a valuable resource.

And people will go out of their way to influence and shift any platform or governance model towards their own interests and they will do the same for any platform that distributes money as money can be used to enhance their own interests. Any platform that allows change or governance from individuals has potential weakness to the interests of individual at the expense of others and is said to be corruptible.

However, a model that is corruptible doesn't necessary mean that the model is destined to be abused, but it is susceptible and weak to abuse by bad actors, and depending on the people attracted to the model, it may be even weaker. In the case of governance models that rely on generated money emissions with no real work applied (staking), this model is likely to attract the most people given the ease of the creation of the money.

But since people are competing for that money and some are willing to corrupt the system in order to increase their money for reasons good or bad, such a governance model is weak to the whims of the users that make the model up. The problem here is that the mechanism used to participate in governance is also money.

Since, money is a universal instrument and at the same time an instrument to participation in a governance model, there is more incentive than ever to obtain more of that money to influence and corrupt the governance model in order to obtain more money.

Such a model devolves into oligarchy where the rich rule and are able to change the rules in their favor, much like the governments we see today. Both are corruptible entities where wealthy individuals are able to apply influence in order to enrich themselves while sometimes at the expense of those less wealthy. Nothing is really solved.

Since such a model of governance is corruptible, the underlying money can not be considered sound as long as individuals within the governance model are still competing for their self-interests.

Since people are always driven by their self-interests and will take advantage of weak systems in order to enhance their self-interests, and money attracts all people due to its universality, a governance model built on top of money itself is doomed to be a system as easily corruptible (if not more corruptible) than current governance systems outside of existing blockchains.

That concludes the general argument and hopefully one can see how the argument also applies to EOS, and perhaps gives us an indication of why some of the poor decisions behind the Steem blockchain were made, and gives a reasonable enough discussion of why I don't think blockchain governance can work in the current ecosystem.

People will argue that EOS provides better governance because it is optional for anyone to join, but that simply means that it provides an optional governance. It doesn't make the governance itself any better. It is still susceptible to the influence of money and even more susceptible because the blockchain itself creates money.

This argument suggests that money itself should be made separate from governance. Building governance on top of a system of money in it of itself seems like a silly idea. Of course individuals will try and manipulate the system to benefit themselves.

Some people will argue that blockchains with such bad actors will eventually die and new communities will rise that treat each other more fairly, but such a view is naively optimistic. Because people's self-interests are bound to conflict with each other and people will act selfishly at the expense of others because sometimes they don't even know what they are doing is detrimental to those around them.

People are people. It is as simple as that. Sound money is that which people can influence the least and blockchains like EOS aren't getting closer to sound money even though they preach moving in such a direction. And one can argue that such a model of governance probably suffers as well as it favors oligarchy more than traditional systems of democracy. Sure it's optional, but that doesn't solve the key issue of corruptibility.

And note how this argument doesn't even take all of EOS's shortcomings in their disastrous launch into account. The same argument applies to coins with perfectly fair distributions and fair emission mechanisms. Why? Because governance itself can change those things. You enter people into the equation and simply wait until someone messes something up. Governance appears doomed to be an imperfect science and attaching it on top of money just doesn't appear to make it any better. If human nature is any indicator, it makes things worse.