Let me sketch what I see in Greg's
quote from early 2013, line by line:
When Bitcoin's behavior is merely a system of computer rules you can trust it because you (or people you trust who read code) can point to the rules and say "it is so because of cryptographic proof, the mathematics of the program make it thusly". If the rules are up for revision by popularity contest or whatever system you like— then you have a much more complicated trust equation where you have to ask if that process will make decisions which are not only wise but also respect your needs.
He is dimly grasping toward the market. The rules are made and revised by the market, and that is why they reliably respect users needs, yet he believes they are made by having the rules be "immutable" like a social contract. He pins this on Nakamoto consensus and conflates it with "computer rules" which are irrelevant as far as what the market supports.
The "complicated trust equation" Greg fears is the market forces of self-interest, the ones Satoshi designed the whole system around, even if Satoshi only covered the miners in his scope of the market process. I would just add to Satoshi's view by including the investors, so that miners act as proxies for the investors, again, because of their own self-interest in having their coins' value be maximized.
Who will cast the ballots, who will count them? Even if the process is democratically fair— is it something that lets the wolves vote to eat the sheep or does the process somehow respect personal liberty and autonomy? All the blockchain distributed consensus stuff starts sounding easy by comparison.
The market! He doesn't grasp economics enough to see how market choice is totally different than democracy, plus he doesn't seem to take seriously the idea that "anyone can run whatever code they want," because he dismisses it by saying elsewhere in the linked post, "miners are irrelevant for a hardforking change: a miner that doesn' follow one that is followed by all the users simply isn't a miner anymore." The same logic Luke and Theymos use: essentially a semantic game where Bitcoin is somehow whatever he wants it to be, or whatever Extreme Consensus decides, with no reference to market prices of the respective forks, etc. Anyone running their own code is dismissed as "not running Bitcoin."
He implies that personal autonomy must be protected by Extreme Consensus, rather than the ability to fork, through that semantic flourish we saw Theymos ape so much a year ago when the censorship started and XT was branded an altcoin (until it would achieve 95% support).
An alternative theory I present is: if some hardforking change is so valuable, why couldn't an altcoin prove that value and earn its place in the free market and eventually supplant the inferior alternative? Why is that inferior to changing the immutable (within the context of the system) rules when doing so is against the will of any of its users[1]?
The Shitcoin theory of economics
He seems to be saying, again, that Bitcoin is essentially rigid and if it can be outcompeted because of that by an altcoin, that is preferable to breaking Extreme Consensus and unleashing the dragons. "Just keep switching to new altcoins when the rigid consensus can no longer adapt. That'll make for some real sound money!" (No surprise Greg was/is a Bitcoin bear.)
Or to use the language of libertarian dogma: Must change only come by force? Can any blockchain cryptocurrency survive if it becomes a practice and perception that the underlying software contract will be changed?
This is the clearest single statement of Extreme Consensus I've found, of the "social contract" variety.
Hardforks: There be technological and philosophical dragons.
Hardforks: There be clown-car trebuchet wielding dipshits in beer-cup hats.
[1] if the rules are subtly broken and ~everyone agrees that they /must/ be changed that is another matter and not the subject I'm talking about.
Ah the 95% escape clause.
