Moderators don't literally "own" the communities they run now. They steward them. They can power-trip, but they can also be supplanted and replaced much easier on the Fediverse than they are on Reddit.

As for being able to "ignore" specific community moderators decisions, that's a recipe that doesn't scale well. In more active communities, that would mean that you would end up consistently seeing a lot of spam and abuse and nonsense because even a poor moderator will do the janitorial work that all communities do.

In terms of instances, there simply isn't any appetite for the type of instances and community culture you want. You are simply in a minority here.