I'm not aware of anybody proposing that bitcoin would be a democratic protocol.
Bitcoin is intended to not have trusted parties. If the mining is done by relatively few parties they become trusted parties. This would not have been an issue if the mining power had remained more evenly spread across all users but it got concentrated in the hands of relatively few.
[...] but this was explicitly rejected for bitcoin.
How was this explicitly rejected? I think the original paper does not really address this but I always assumed that the original intention was to have a large fraction of Bitcoin users also be miners and the concentration that happened was an unforseen development. But maybe that is just my personal interpretation but I maintain that this is at least to some extend in conflict with Bitcoin wanting to be trustless.
Not really. It's on the basis of cost.
No, the miners already have all the hashing power. I have to trust them to include my transactions in blocks and not ignore them, I have to trust them not to undo transactions. If the Bitcoin mining power was more evenly spread among Bitcoin users this would be less of an issue than in the current situation where all the mining power is concentrated in about ten mining pools. Sure, pools are not miners but if the reported numbers are correct than there were at least in the past mining farms owning several percent of the mining power.
Bitcoin is intended to not have trusted parties. If the mining is done by relatively few parties they become trusted parties. This would not have been an issue if the mining power had remained more evenly spread across all users but it got concentrated in the hands of relatively few.
[...] but this was explicitly rejected for bitcoin.
How was this explicitly rejected? I think the original paper does not really address this but I always assumed that the original intention was to have a large fraction of Bitcoin users also be miners and the concentration that happened was an unforseen development. But maybe that is just my personal interpretation but I maintain that this is at least to some extend in conflict with Bitcoin wanting to be trustless.
Not really. It's on the basis of cost.
No, the miners already have all the hashing power. I have to trust them to include my transactions in blocks and not ignore them, I have to trust them not to undo transactions. If the Bitcoin mining power was more evenly spread among Bitcoin users this would be less of an issue than in the current situation where all the mining power is concentrated in about ten mining pools. Sure, pools are not miners but if the reported numbers are correct than there were at least in the past mining farms owning several percent of the mining power.