- Create a proposal that has no significant opposition. A proposal has significant opposition if it is strongly opposed by any of: one Bitcoin Core committer, one large exchange or company (Coinbase, etc.), a few generally-recognized Bitcoin experts, several smaller but still economically-important companies, or a large group of ordinary users who have reasonable arguments and are willing and able to exert some real economic force. (The underlined groups are the ones with clearly-significant opposition as I currently see things.) This means that it's very difficult to do controversial hardforks. That's the point. You need to get consensus -- that is, make a hardfork non-controversial -- in order to do it.
Yes, absolutely, I agree completely. if we want a truly consensus and decentralized Bitcoin, we must give lone third parties the absolute power to veto any and all changes. Yes! This is the answer Bitcoin needs! /s
By this logic, Blockstream could maintain a 1MB block limit and force Bitcoin users worldwide to use their service.
Actually they can't. Blockstream doesn't even offer a service yet, so they aren't considered a large company or exchange. They would count as a smaller but still economically important company. If they were the only ones who opposed a block size increase, then they do not count as several companies (just one company) so they would be disregarded provided that everyone else in that list agrees with the change.
I suppose that's true, but Theymos' propositions are still incredibly harsh on any change whatsoever. Blockstream alone wouldn't be able to stop any progress, but several companies with the same intentions as Blockstream could (and there are several companies with the same intentions).
Theymos obviously has some sort of self interest in the whole debate, or he wouldn't be so god damn opposed to any change at all (I mean just look at his statements on the reddit). He has a rough history (wasn't he just uncovered to be laundering money through some donation?) and I really wish he didn't have so much power in the community.