@rocks
It really is "the argument to keep banging them with." It's the Achilles heel of the Core=Bitcoin position, the final boss's weak point, the grand chink in the armor, the one thing that from all their economically oblivious comments it is ever-clear that they have no idea how to defend against (not that there is any legit defense).
The best dark-arts way to defend is probably to continue with the "non-Core = altcoin" schtick, because people remain generally confused about how altcoins interface with the World Wide Ledger's network effects, but ultimately if centralized control is necessary to avoid the threat, as Rip Rowan said, Bitcoin has already failed as a concept.
This is why I think a final complete understanding of Bitcoin has to see it as purely a market-maintained phenomenon along lines of Schelling-like consensus, where the consistency of things like the issuance schedule are seen as the market expressing its desire for such consistency, not as the result of rules set in stone by Satoshi or any other revered Core figures (though the initial naive sense of "setting in stone" did give something solid for the Schelling consensus to coalesce around).
This Schelling-like market consensus is even better than setting in stone, because it functions like something set in stone for as long as that is critical to maintain Bitcoin's market value, yet can adapt - not by short-term market whim, because that is a value-damaging - if there is a true emergency need for it (which may be never, but who is smarter than the market to know?).
Also, with this clearly understood, the idea of decision-making by fork arbitrage may make more sense. The endgame for governance is 100% market-based decision-making, simply because at the valuations Bitcoin is headed for, nothing else would be solid enough to withstand the attacks. When the market cap is in the trillions, any other system of governance would be gamed instantly.
