That's not how it works.
Nodes relay information to other nodes but one node doesn't need to broadcast to the entire network!
The burden of 'massive redundancy' you speak of is distributed across the thousands of nodes,
each responsible for communication with other nodes.
Wow. Now I understand why you're so confused about this blocksize issue. That _is_ how it works.
Every node in the network must receive and process every transaction in every block. There is no distribution or sharing of that load.
Are you suggesting that jtoomim is not the lead maintainer? Are you playing ignorant regarding the definition of a hard fork?
I don't think classic has been very transparent about its governance. Jtoomim is supposedly lead maintainer, but if you look in the repository he has only made a few small changes and not done much merging. Meanwhile, the project was supposedly created with extensive involvement with people at cryptsy but they seem to have backed out and been removed from the site; ... and Jeff Garzik had one of his change requests summarily overridden and closed by Olivier Janssens. Beyond non-developers with commit access like Olivier there are also many commits being made by people I've never heard of before such as "rusty-loy". None of the membership of the project appears to be public.