That's a good story. If you support the status quo, that's the story you tell. But it isn't accurate.
If you have any kind of rough consensus, or even just lack of strong consensus to oppose a change, then support of the majority of miners is sufficient to make any change you want. That's the reality.
Yes, that's true. But the miners here are not changing things right now. They are sticking with the 1MB version which exists since the days of Satoshi because
Maybe. Or maybe they are just doing it because it suits their economic interests to keep blocks small, as TPTB said. I consider that quite plausible, I'm surprised you don't.
With the existing game theory? Nah.
Just because the limit will go to 2-4-8-20, doesn't mean they *have* to mine >1mb, or even >10kb. There is nothing stopping them from mining 0-tx blocks even if blocks go to 10MB tomorrow morning. Some are mining zero tx blocks right now.
Wrong. Increasing that limit allows miners elsewhere (Bitfury, KnC, 21.co, etc.) to overcome their competitive advantage, and to even drive Chinese miners off the network altogether by mining larger blocks that China can't support.
I don't understand. Let's say Chinese adopt software that SUPPORTS large blocks, but configure it in a way where it mines zero-tx blocks on purpose, or very high fee txs that are top-priority for the senders, something like <50kb in txs per block. How will others "drive them out"? With what mechanism?