I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.
I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.
Every individual
Full Node wallet is a distinct node that can independently verify every transaction going back to the genesis block. They aren't dependent upon those 100 full nodes spun up on amazon ec2.* If one of those amazon ec2 nodes attempts to relay a block that doesn't conform to their full nodes consensus rule it will simply be ignored. The reason why a single full node with bitcoin is worth something is because there is an economic actor behind that full node who has agency and decides those coins have value. The only reason anything has value whether gold, fiat or bitcoin deals with that economic agent who places value upon their asset and can make choices or vote with that value.
Thus 100 full nodes spun up by one person with no btc associated with any of them has the exact same vote* and 1 node with no btc and even less of a vote than 1 node with btc. In fact those 100 nodes impose a very slight security risk as they are being hosted within a central company and misleading our ecosystem into believing that the node count is more decentralized than it actually is. If any of those full nodes changed consensus and other non -full node SPV clients trusted them that would also be another attack vector.
* There is a low probability attack if those full nodes provided an alternative history during the bootstrap process(first time the blockchain is downloaded, that a new full node can coincidentally and unluckily peer from only those 100 nodes which could maliciously provide an alternative history as well. This means that there is a different and distinct form of a vote that is the exception that breaks the rule. 100 nodes have more of a vote than 1 node with regards to influencing new nodes bootstrapping to the main chain. Therefore not only is there a complex interwoven power dynamic between multiple groups within bitcoin there are distinct forms of "voting" at play here.