Unfortunately leaders will be leaders ... good, bad or in between. There is no way to influence them or change how they do things. That's why I strongly feel that to curb this type of behavior it has to be baked into the platform, not left up to the ones in power to do the right thing. Anyone can come along and start a new account, dump some money into Steemit and be a bad "leader" overnight. That's a problem. If you give leaders powers that they can abuse, soon they'll be abused. We're all humans here, sooner or later our selfish side will show.