What makes Bitcoin powerful is the ability for different people, with different ideologies and who may be enemies, to agree on the one true chain.
The one true chain is the chain valued by the market. In fact, the market can actually choose to have more than one true chain: it is possible for Bitcoin to split into Bitcoin A and Bitcoin B. The 21M cap is a case in point.
I hope that in several decades time the ecosystem is much larger and more powerful forces try to change one of the protocol rules, such as raising the 21M cap. At this point I hope you realize how important it is that hardfork’s cannot occur without strong consensus across the community and how important it was that the small blocksists won the battle in the 2014 to 2016 period.
Raising the 21M cap is not something I would favour, yet if someone wishes to introduce a hard fork to raise the cap that is up to them. The result would be a division of opinion. The minority, whichever side it fell on, would then have to choose whether to align itself with the majority or whether to go its own way. The expectation is there would normally be compelling economic reasons, created by bitcoin’s internal dynamic, to go with the majority. My suspicion is that, in this particular case, the market might well value the side favouring a 21M cap enough for a split chain to be viable even if it were the minority. Possibly that would depend on the size of the minority.
The fact the chain splits means there is continuity for holders. Whichever chain predominates, holders can maintain their stake. They can choose one chain or the other, both or neither. The holders are the market, which bitcoin serves or it is nothing.
Funnily enough, I am a holder. I hold bitcoin and have done for some years.
Part of the attraction for me was that bitcoin was stable and resilient, yet it could adapt quickly when faced with the need for change. I am no longer sure that is true.
The reason it could adapt quickly was that anyone could introduce a change. If there was no majority for the change it would be unlikely to happen, because the market would likely value the stronger, majority position in preference to the weaker, minority position. If a majority developed, change would then become likely.
In each case, however, the minority could decide to split off and seek to survive on its own terms in the market, whether that be a minority seeking change or a minority seeking to maintain the status quo.
Conformity with the bitcoin majority is not driven by politics, it is driven by the market. When that ceases to be true, bitcoin becomes coercive and inflexible, unable to meet market needs because it is always preoccupied with itself.
You and BScore are currently seeking to prevent the evolution and development of bitcoin except on your own terms, what you call "strong consensus".
There is no technical reason, no validating rule, which enforces “strong consensus” (or 95% majorities) for hard forks. So, like those in control of the world's fiat currencies, BScore is reduced to politics and desperate attempts to manipulate opinion: refusing a block size limit increase (unless agreed by ‘a few individuals’ to suppress an alternative implementation), forum censorship (by ‘a few individuals’), DDoS attacks (by ‘a few individuals’), personal abuse and trolling (by ‘a few individuals’), timewasting 'scaling' conferences, and so on.
Do the ends justify the means? I don't believe so. The effects seem to me entirely malign. If BScore supports this form of politics it is a malign influence. I said that yesterday too, but you did not deign to comment.
For you Blockstream Core is all sweetness and light, everything they do is done from the highest motives, they have no commercial interests or plans beyond maybe holding some bitcoin, they are interested only in safeguarding the interests of the weakest of the miners, etc, etc.
You are so reluctant to discuss Blockstream Core critically and openly that you say, "claims that Blockstream have nefarious self interest in profiting from LN, which is why they are blocking a HF" [...] "make the conversation difficult to continue."
Unfortunately this is the elephant in the room: what is Blockstream's business model and how do they intend to provide a return to their investors?
I accept that if you have no relationship to Blockstream you may not know, but if it is unclear to you, how can you be so sure of what their commercial interest is not?
Meanwhile I believe it is entirely credible that Blockstream Core hope to monetise off-chain solutions to scaling for which they need to implement Segwit, that they wish to exploit their control of the reference client to that end, and that they regard restricting the blocksize limit as advantageous to themselves (despite at least 85% of miners wanting to see an increase). Nothing in your response seriously challenges that view or explains why it is mistaken.
The idea Blockstream Core can only ever introduce a hard fork to increase the block size when all competing proposals which do not satisfy your idea of "strong consensus" have been withdrawn is ludicrous. I can only hope the miners finally realise that it is they that have the power of decision, they that serve the market, and that it is they that are going to have to act to increase the block size limit or else fail the market and see bitcoin disintegrate around them. No one else can do it.
E: means and ends
E2: punctuation
