First off, miners can't spend your coins, they can only deny that you spend them.  So counterparty risk is so significantly diminished as to warrant a different term.  And so is trust.

Second, if you don't like what miners are doing (presumably denying your transactions), you (or more likely a group of similarly minded people) can pool your money and buy your own miners.  (This presupposes that the miners can even identify your transactions which is a necessary step before one can even think about granting permission) Your miners can join the network (without permission) and so some % of blocks mined will be what you want them to be, unless the majority of other miners collectively choose to ignore your blocks at a potential economic disadvantage to themselves.  In which case you can continue on your own fork if you really want.  So again so much less permission is required as compared to traditional payment networks that is does not make sense to claim that bitcoin requires "permission".