DPoS is literally just the golden rule: who has the gold rules. On Steem Sun got the founders stake @ned had refrained using to govern Steem with, and on Hive that stake is now folded into the HPS, leaving the formerly lesser stakeholders to @ned now the governing stakeholders.

All that governs either chain is money.

However, many other governance mechanisms exist, and simply claiming that they only conceal the effect of stake isn't factually based. Egalitarian tribes of Bushmen in the Kalahari demonstrate that for the vast duration of human society, stake probably had little to no effect on governance.

Regarding forking out stake or such, which I note is just a form of censorship, the situation @joe.public is in demonstrates that no outrage from the community issues when one of the herd is singled out and ejected.