Sorry but if you really think bitcoins success lies in the fact that a simple change can only be made by a developer then the system is completely doomed. Good thing emergent consensus does not work like this, anywhere in nature.
I think some of them are unaware, or have not considered the fact that consensus can be emergent. I don't even think Gavin has fully internalized this, even though he did agree to the idea three years ago.
This is indeed a fundamental difference in viewpoints. I normally like this principle -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd but when determining complex code improvements I believe the WOTC tends to breakdown as it tends to work best when there is a definitive correct answer to a particular question (not within scaling decisions as there are complex tradeoffs and no single correct option) and social influence can make the WOTC extremely inaccurate.
I do think there are valid concerns being raised about governance, but I would warn you that direct democracy and groupthink can be very dangerous. Emergent consensus can decide upon a larger block because enough users demand it , but that doesn't mean it technically can work or scale efficiently. O(n2) is a real problem that so far only lightning network with larger blocksizes or treechains seem to adequately address.