The nodes should determine what the value is, not the developers. But the software itself in the nodes should make the determination, not the node's human operators. I've been saying this all along; dynamic blocksize limit is the best solution to me. And that's not what you're saying at all, Peter.
You are essentially saying that people should not have the free choice. Someone does have to choose however, you can not escape this fact, under the scenario you describe it is obvious that the Core developers would choose for us. They would effectively control and decide on the future of Bitcoin under this model. I strongly disagree with this approach. I do think that this might be at the crux of our disagreement. It most certainly is an ideological disagreement, even if you disagree with that and claim truth and scientific validity it does not change that for me this is an ideological issue. In political thinking the question is often asked of whom decides, in the case of Bitcoin I think that the people or what is referred to as the economic majority should decide.
In order to achieve what you are suggesting you would have to either radically change the protocol and take the freedom out of the protocol, which i think is actually impossible to do since people can still choose to run it or not, unless you combine Bitcoin with the power and force of the state. The other way to achieve what you think would be the ideal governance model of Bitcoin would be to convince enough people that they do not have a choice or that they should defer their decision to the experts or authority instead. Neither of these scenarios seems particularly appealing to me so I definitely favor a bottom up approach where ultimately it is the users/peers that decide on the future of Bitcoin collectively in a distributed and decentralized manner, even if that means that we might sometimes not be able to agree with each other which would most likely lead to inevitable splits in the future.
This is the price of freedom, I can see how having a totalitarian approach can be appealing, no politics just centralized control by the technocrats, no splits just complete consensus and everyone has to agree with the center all of the time and for the rest of time. If enough people believed this it could work, but I am a freedom loving person so I would not want to be part of such a totalitarian construct.
Well, let's let extend your approach. Shall we give users control over:
- The RAM size of the transaction pool
- The 21 million coin limit
- What the interval is between average block times
- Which transactions they're willing to permit in the blockchain
- The dust output threshold
If you let users vote on those things with their bitcoin nodes, I predict "Bad Things". The consensus rules are chosen carefully by the developers because of the effect they have on Bitcoin's monetary properties, your suggestion to allow an open vote on those rules is just an invitation to bad actors to promote self-destructive rules.
Oh, you're saying Bitcoin has failed if it can't withstand that kind of vector for self-determination? Well, that's why that vector doesn't work now and never has, and what protects the network and it's userbase from that method of attack is the strength of the consensus rules. Anything that threatens the consensus rules is not so great when they're the primary protection from bad actors altering the monetary properties of Bitcoin out of recognition. Funny how you keep pushing that this is somehow not a problem, somehow the most positive thing that could happen.
Your solution should really be to launch a competitor to Bitcoin that shares your vision. You have been in a slim minority for some time, and no-one really wants what you're selling. Why not move on and convince people with this great version of Bitcoin that you're wanting to change to? Remember that arguments about how XT is somehow the "original" don't wash; it's small/shrinking and always was, it needs a hard fork in the blockchain whereas the supposed interloper currently has no hard forks proposed. Why won't XT stand on it's own, if it's so appealing? Why the need to assimilate the Bitcoin miners?