note how gmax and Luke pull the same perverted "consensus" argument out of there pocket in a political battle where they, as a minority of 5(?) devs argued their wishes should hold sway over just about the entire community's?
Luke presented the idea that the "devs = Bitcoin" and should have ultimate say, before he backpedaled on it. I can understand how devs would think that way, but it's of course silly for the reasons you mentioned there.
As for Greg, he does make unfair points whenever he feels he can veil it sufficiently (though so do Gavin and especially Hearn, from what I've seen - is this part of the core dev culture?), but more importantly he has this weirdly cognitively dissonant "I know best and get to decide, but everyone's equal" thing going on.
It's like he feels like he doesn't get enough respect for what he does, and is owed more sway in the sense of actual control rather than just influence and core dev status. That impulse explains his comment yesterday when he was lamenting all the work he'd done to make it just so things don't break with 1MB blocks (if not for those optimizations Bitcoin with 1MB blocks would be a "smoking hole in the ground" were I believe his words) and yet no one seems to appreciate it, they just want to march forward with even bigger blocks.
The old underappreciated tech guy syndrome?
I had a smile, the problem here is coders are not machines either. Your post reminds me of a typical plot to a batman movie, or the incredibles, a little humility could have gone a long way.