Here's a thought experiment...How about have just one big pool and every miner is automatically a member of that pool.  That pool would of course get every block award.  The pool operator sends out the appropriate fractions of block award based on the hashing contribution of each miner.  As long as the pool operator didn't abuse their power this would be the most fair system.  Of course that degree of centralization would be ripe for abuse and corruption, if history is any guide.  Even if the operator *wanted* to be fair others could find ways to coerce the operator to allocate shares unfairly and cook the books to hide it by manipulating the statistics showing how many miners there are and their relative hash power.  It seems clear to me that having 1 pool with %100 of the hash power is bad.  That raises the question: Is 2 pools split 80%/20% any better?  How about 3 pools 60/35/5%?  Actually, when bitcoin really hits the big time (e.g. $5000 per coin?) then I believe any sufficiently large pool operator becomes a target of the sorts of people who are good at forced manipulation (e.g. governments, criminal organizations).


I think as long as people are in charge of operating mining pools there are opportunities for extortion, abuse, and corruption.