decision to force a fee market is a centralized solution
On it's face this is a nonsense argument since any development decisions are centralized in the same manner.
Increase the blocksize, decrease the blocksize, or leave it alone, they are all (centralized) development decisions.
It's also false that anything is really centralized about it because if there were truly a consensus for change (over the objections of the 'centralized' developers) there would be a successful fork.
Your mistake here is assuming the Gavinistas have any interest in, much less the ability to, participate in an honest debate, whereby they apply the same criticisms and expectations they put upon Team Core to themselves and their own goal of larger blocks.
They have yet to demonstrate any such interest, nor the ability in terms of intellectual consistency required to develop one.
Instead we get the exquisite hypocrisy of selective outrage (aimed only at Team Core), Chicken Little Sky-Is-Falling panic, and endless exaggeration. Not to mention the near-daily Two Minutes Hate directed at the devs responsible for scaling Bitcoin all the way up to 1MB.