One of, and perhaps the main, critical issue with modern decentralized systems is that they draw on the collective intelligence of the many rather than the wisdom of the moneyed few.
People are willing to contribute their time and energy to creating new systems precisely because they are given a voice, and being given a voice - being given dignity - is more valuable than money to many people.
The problem with the system of "whales" whose voice drowns out completely the voices of the masses by their completely unbalanced voting power, is that it tells everyone contributing to the platform that "your voice does not matter".
This is not a great message to send if you are setting up a system based on decentralization, crowd-sourcing, and collective intelligence. In fact, it is extremely counterproductive to setting up such a system.
If Steemit fails, this will be the reason why it failed. All depends on how soon power is transferred from the top 10 whales to the top million contributors.