My take is that Dan and Ned want to let the 19 witnesses decide out of fear of being pointed fingers at personally. They most likely want change too otherwise they wouldn't have proposed a vote in the first place.
I get your point though but I don't think that every member of the community should be able to vote on these decisions. Many people have no idea how the system actually works, 90% of people I have interacted with think that steem power gives you interest( crazy I know) I much prefer witnesses which are technically knowledgable about steem to make these decisions.
I encourage witnesses to have a look at my recent posts 
https://steemit.com/saving/@bobsunday/price-will-continue-downward-unless-we-make-a-simple-change#@snowflake/re-charlieshrem-re-bobsunday-price-will-continue-downward-unless-we-make-a-simple-change-20161024t234409300z
https://steemit.com/saving/@bobsunday/round-2-community-organized-rescue-mission#@snowflake/re-timcliff-re-snowflake-re-timcliff-re-bobsunday-re-bobsunday-round-2-community-organized-rescue-mission-20161026t190225800z
https://steemit.com/steemit/@timcliff/attention-sharks-there-is-blood-in-the-water-are-you-ready-to-invest#@snowflake/re-luminousvisions-re-snowflake-re-luminousvisions-re-timcliff-attention-sharks-there-is-blood-in-the-water-are-you-ready-to-invest-20161026t210446700z

I explained in details why I think reducing inflation rate to the lowest possible is important,why reducing the vesting withdraw period to a minimum is also very important and why the current high inflation rate and vesting withdraw period serve no real purpose other than undermining the system as a whole.
I also explained why the more coins is being issued the more difficult it will be for the price of steem to increase in the future which means the more difficult for the rewards on the platform to increase hence why the steem inflation rate should be reduced at the lowest possible.




__Here is why only reducing slighly the inflation rate and the vesting withdraw period would make absolutely no difference.__

- There would still be unnecessary and exponential downward pressure on the price of steem
- The reverse- split would still have to occur
- Users would still have the illusion that they receive VESTs for being powered up ( this is bad for many different reasons, for example users think that their influence grows naturally without doing anything nor buying any steem, so they buy less and curate less.)
- If the inflation is say 40% speculators would still be wary and reluctant to enter the market
- Users participation would still be restrained by an inconvenient lock time period.
- The steem power distribution wouldn't be much faster as there would still be few buyers if the inflation is say 40%.
- The platform would still be confusing for most people to understand ( especially investors) .
- Steemit would still have this reputation of being this inflationnary ponzi currency and people would still want to sell it instead of holding it.


What steemit needs right now is interest from the crypto sphere, especially traders and investors. Speculation is everything in crypto, it's what gets a project like ETH to go from a few millions market cap to a billion, it's what gets you big investors pay attention. For this you need a currency with the lowest inflation possible and you need a very short time lock period so that volume can increase, more people can participate and distribution can happen faster.. Today if an investors want to buy say  1 000 000$ worth of steem he won't be able to do so without sending the price  sky high which means he would pay a premium all the way up. Volume is key if you want big investors to enter the market. Volume creates confidence, there is a reason John McAfee made a remark early on about the lack of volume. Steem should aim at reducing it supply long term not increasing it. When the supply goes down the price goes up, if bitcoin was using graphene it would be perfectly suited for such a platform because it would allow the price to grow organically which means rewards would grow as more users use it.
Steem would have to burn more coins that it creates to pay for rewards ( promoted features and more) but it is totally possible to have a decreasing supply long term and that's what steem should aim for, certainely not increasing it crazy like they do know, this is insane.