It's too late to do anything about it for Bitcoin - we've gotta live with the distribution we got. And maybe it won't be a problem. But for future cryptocurrencies, it's something we need to consider. And we need to watch out and be ready to refine the idea if it looks like the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss.
Memcoin in specific proposed something like adding democratic processes into the coin itself. I think that would be the best way to improve the protocol. The next coin should probably include democracy and voting within the coin itself so that holders can somehow vote as a group.
Problem with such a scheme is how to weigh the votes. By held BTC? By hashpower? None of the solutions are exactly
ideal.
It's an interesting proposal, though. Reminds me of "BIP" 2112's proposal to generalize the current "Version"/"P2SH coinbase" mechanisms by embedding the block validation code in the blockchain itself, and letting miners indicate which such algorithms they're willing to endorse.
It's not ideal but it could be worked out. Like I said my idea which I've been thinking about is a type of smart currency with autonomous functionality. This would mean it wouldn't necessarily be completely hard coded but in some instances there would be democratic functions, in other cases the coin would decide that there isn't enough coins or that there are too many, but in order to have something like that every "miner" would have to still be part of the AI grid. Either way as of 2013 it's not possible and after 2030 when it might be possible it would still probably be overly centralized because super computers will probably still be centralized.
Here is the #1 issue politically of our time. Closed source artificial intelligence has to be banned.