That was an attempt at mockery, seeing as people like hdbuck, icebreaker and a few of the other hardcore MP fanboys seem to enjoy calling everyone with even the slightest left-wing leaning a statist.  And the jab remains that I still respect the free market more than fake libertarian pretenders like them.  

Which is the more authoritarian attitude in your mind?

a) Unilaterally changing network parameters is a threat to the network and should be derided / ridiculed / dismissed / etc.

or

b) Any user can unilaterally change any network parameters as they wish because it's an open and permissionless system.

I'm of the opinion that hdbuck's view, "a)", is authoritarian.  My view, "b)", is the complete opposite of authoritarian.  Thus concludes another edition of "why do I always have to spell it out for people like they're not all there upstairs?"    

Yes, I think the urgency pushed by larger block proponets plays into a power grab. Right now they are fighting against Core's roadmap that is sufficient to take the pressure off; it also lays the groundwork to solve the rest of the problem in successive stages.

When dealing with urgent emergencies, one must keep in mind the USA PATRIOT Act, the Reichstag Fire Decree, and Problem-Reaction-Solution in general.
Regarding why not 2MB now, there is a known validation DDoS attack (chewing CPU), that must be addressed first. It could delay blocks by more than 10 minutes if the blocksize were 2MB. Core devs will never allow it, until they've rolled out the fix, as planned in their roadmap.

I thought things were looking relatively bright with segregated witness, in particular, an exciting development that likely flowered into existence because of the healthy and measured way the community approached all of this without resorting to falling for the FUD. The scaling Bitcoin conferences and the intrinsically decentralized, communal nature of this approach toward reaching consensus, rather than relying on a CEO, seems to me to have spoken directly to what is good about Bitcoin.

But then you Gavin and Hearn and the community behind them. Their method is not to participate in the larger community's discussion -- they didn't attend the last scaling Bitcion conference at all, for instance -- but instead they created a hard fork which in lay men's term is simply, "it's our way or the highway."

In other words, they want us to hand Bitcoin over to them. That is their solution to the complicated nature of open source, let's just install a CEO. Essentially, they are saying, "give up on the community, no one at those conferences matter . . . give us power, scrap Bitcoin and come over to our new Bitcoin." That's scary, at least to me.

I could understand XT, as it certainly spawned an urgency that otherwise wasn't being addressed with enough haste, and I applaud them for that. But then when things are looking bright, and the urgency far less dramatic, they just rekindle the fight with even more desperation in the form of "Bitcoin Classic." There is something else going on here. Why the urgency? Why the desperation? Why do we need to restart the civil war?

What further disturbs and concerns me is that Mike Hearn, one of the two brains behind XT along with Gavin, actually gladly accepted the position of developing R3, the block chain being created by the coordinated effort of the international bankers. He works for the banks. This demonstrates a mindset intent on power.

I’ve spent more than 5 years being a Bitcoin developer. The software I’ve written has been used by millions of users, hundreds of developers, and the talks I’ve given have led directly to the creation of several startups. I’ve talked about Bitcoin on Sky TV and BBC News. I have been repeatedly cited by the Economist as a Bitcoin expert and prominent developer. I have explained Bitcoin to the SEC, to bankers and to ordinary people I met at cafes.

From the start, I’ve always said the same thing: Bitcoin is an experiment and like all experiments, it can fail. So don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. I’ve said this in interviews, on stage at conferences, and over email. So have other well known developers like Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik.

But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly. The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins.

[...]
The release of Bitcoin XT somehow pushed powerful emotional buttons in a small number of people. One of them was a guy who is the admin of the bitcoin.org website and top discussion forums. He had frequently allowed discussion of outright criminal activity on the forums he controlled, on the grounds of freedom of speech. But when XT launched, he made a surprising decision. XT, he claimed, did not represent the “developer consensus” and was therefore not really Bitcoin. Voting was an abomination, he said, because:

Because it is my considered opinion that Bitcoin is perfect as it is and that it doesn't need to be "fixed" to provide tremendous value to humanity at large.

It's time to be greedy and defend our safe-haven

I see a fair amount of utility in having an XT fork which siphoned off a sizable number of 'bitcoiners' who are deeply ignorant about the principles of the system and are mostly MultiBitch-class users who add no value.

the peasants' desire to trade security for adoption is met with indifference/hostility/scorn from the people who matter.

The wealthy will continue to rule Bitcoin and there is no amount of "new users" tears that will change this.

A "one-percenter blockchain" is the only rational vision for Bitcoin, whether you like it or not. Fortunately for the first time ever you will be allowed a seat at their table. It will cost you some if you wanna trade with them but you will have other options to enjoy the security of your wealth.