I fully expect some governments to outlaw Monero in some ways, it is much more dangerous to them than Bitcoin. But it would be out of ignorance because Monero can be made transparent if required by law on a individual basis and not on a panopticon level like Bitcoin.
They don't need to outlaw Monero unless it becomes popular and used for paying for goods & services. They can just blacklist all BTC trades which didn't have KYC documentation. This effectively blacklists Monero since virtually no one pays directly in Monero for goods & services.
I don't (currently) see a niche where Monero would have any scale for users to resort to in that case. You'd have few 1000s of investors without a way to sell.
For me at this time, Monero is useful as a way to mix BTC -> XMR -> BTC. And as a speculation on people not understanding that Monero doesn't solve any other problem than that.
Sorry to be so blunt because I am really glad that Monero exists! I feel a sense of gratitude for Cryptonote and Monero, but how to express it if I also feel more needs to be done? Am I supposed to go volunteer my time to code on Monero and then have my commits be rejected due to political posturing and also probably not earn anything significant. I just don't know how to pay my appreciation without it looking like I am the enemy. Maybe I am the enemy. I'd rather be the cohort.
Well you're right about not earning much, and if that's the sole issue it's perfectly understandable.
But I disagree that "political posturing" would have anything to do with your commits being rejected. Good work is good work... it doesn't matter who submits the pull request... and I'm confident the devs would appreciate the help, so don't let your past disagreements get in the way of making things better.