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This is exactly correct. All the hashpower in the world provides zero security if 51%+ of it is not "honest".

You're perfectly right, thanks for clarifying!

good point, but a mining monopoly would destroy the value and hence it's in the self-interest of miners to be diversified. that's an economical self-correcting mechanism on top of this technical mining/reward feedback mechanism.

AFAIK this is the conventional wisdom but not a proven fact. A smart 51% attacker could profit and go unnoticed:

> And contrary to commonly-repeated assertions, a monopolist can engage in subtle attacks that are hard to detect.

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopo...