It is good that the miners (the witnesses) don't compete between themselves
Oh, you are wrong.
They do and that's great.
There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the blockchain.
Everybody wants to be better than others which in this case is serving the platform the best they can.
Otherwise, the minimum that they have to do would be as simple as generating blocks i.e. running single machine with some software on it. Monkeys can do that.
Also, it's not really a mining. Most of STEEM goes to non-witnesses, i.e. authors, curators, shareholders. Smallest piece of cake is shared between the witnesses.
It's not the witnesses who are important on this platform. It's YOU. Those who have Steem Power and vote.
If a witness doesn't do what you expect (within your subjective opinion about being best for the platform) you take away your vote and such witness is fired.
RE: Call for steem seed nodes!