You should check out John Bogle's "Clash of Cultures" (founder of Vanguard), he discusses this problem at length.
In general I'm inclined to agree with you though. This thing has a lot of hype around it because it's backed by Eric Ries, the "Lean Startup" author, but I don't really see a problem with the NYSE/Nasdaq in their current form. People overlook the liquidity, depth, and other benefits of such well-run exchanges; it's not at all clear to me that an average investor would be better off on this "long-term" exchange, where I'm sure volumes will be a lot lower, and bid/ask spreads will be wider than on a "bad" exchange with many "short-term" players, who, as a side-effect of their actions, create tons of liquidity for small-potatoes investors.
Frankly, I don't understand the point of this at all. There's nothing stopping a long-term oriented investor from holding shares a long period of time in today's markets. And there are real risks of corporations being too long-term focused. The existence of Amazon, at a minimum, should show that companies with 10-20 year investment horizons are tenable under the current system.
Now, how well that mission is fulfilled is another thing. The reason I note vanguard specifically is because of the current activist spat between P&G and Nelson Peltz/Trian Partners. Of the top 3 holders (vanguard, black rock, state street), only vanguard voted against the activist shakeup.
I guess I'm just having trouble seeing the difference between giving a bunch of small investors more power, vs a large amount of krill with similar goals making up a whale the company can't ignore. It seems the tenure setup complicates a lot without immediately perceptible benefit, at least to me.