Someone with a critical eye could quite easily look at the stats after the steem / hive fork, and rationally deduce that it's the same project, just doubled.

Sounds like a very uncritical eye to me.
Might as well say that Bitcoin is the same as every other Bitcoin fork.
Code can be copied, but networks/communities can not.

DPOS by passes the 'capital and merit' phase, going straight to oligarchy and the midwit.

Right... yeah it doesn't though. The stacks of more trustworthy people are the ones getting bigger.

Still in the early stages of merit. Crypto actually bypasses the bureaucracy stage with the ability to fork governance in an instant. These networks are permissionless. You can't add red tape to them. Healthy competition is everywhere. You are impatient.