Pumpkin (and thereby Freedom) do change their witness votes from time to time, so all is not lost. The question is, who controls pumpkin and what are their parameters for choosing witnesses?

The buck stops with the witnesses, but if they are all "Yes Men" (and women) then we will never see critical thinking step in and make reasonable requests/demands. Everyone is too afraid of losing those witness rewards for producing blocks.

So really, the buck stops with the witness voters. We do have enough cumulative power to outvote Freedom if we ALL started using out witness votes. Unfortunately, so many people don't even bother to vote for witnesses or even know what it means to vote, or be a witness, that we will not be seeing these changes any time soon.