If Gavin is worried about not being able to fork after the next potential burst why not apply Justus idea [1], too much coding with not enough time?
[1]https://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2015/02/09/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-2-price-discovery/
Because who pays for that coding? And who can be sure that the proposal, even if completed and tested, will be adopted?
Andresen's position seems to be: (i) he takes responsibility for coding and testing a solution that as far as he can see takes care of the issue well into the future (ii) he does this with sufficient time for others to analyze it, so that, whatever else happens (iii) there is at least one safe fall-back option.
Can he guarantee his proposal is optimal? Of course not. It is just quite reassuring for it to be out.
All you said is correct independently from the adopted solution. The chief scientist is in charge and he's doing what he think is the best compromise between techinal and political aspects to get the changes accepted. i got it. All come down to accountability and feasibility.
And I want to underline that I really do appreciate the way is moving both on the technical and political ground.
What I think is tha Justus' proposal has solid theoretical economic background, a brilliant way to introduce a price discovery mechanism for the P2P network and, more to the point, it kills to birds with one stone introducing an economic incentive for people to run full nodes.