Explain why, other than "technical considerations" (as in how the hell do you do it) perhaps, Bitcoin should not have been created as a spin-off of the fiat ledger. Economically speaking, Bitcoin essentially did exactly what altcoins are accused of doing: failing to respect the existing ledger and instead attempting to impose its own. This gets attacked in both cases as pump-and-dump scams. The similarity should be quite apparent.
You seem to think I'm making a fairness argument; I'm not. I'm simply saying that it is a recipe for failure to not employ the spin-off method using the primary ledger when it can be done.
And if that could have been done with the transition from fiat to Bitcoin, it would have. And that is basically what mining is. I don't think there is anything closer to spinning off that could have been done with Bitcoin. It is only now that Bitcoin exists that perfect spinning off is possible for the first time. The "technical considerations" you mention are exactly the reason.
Vitalik makes an argument somewhere that you can get a sort of equilibrium if coins done as spin-offs only respect the ledgers of other coins that have themselves respected previous ledgers. By that standard no one should spin-off from Bitcoin.
That's pretty hilarious coming from him. Besides, if you're going to make a fairness argument, there is absolutely nothing wrong fairness-wise with a freely mineable coin like Monero (whereas Ethereum's IPO was arguably a bald money grab). It's just that it's an ineffective way to launch a coin versus the spin-off technique.