This is what is eating the soul of Bitcoin at this hour. Greediness. Bitcoin Core greed to bank on higher fee's and on their off-chain solution offered by their father and almighty Blockstream funded with millions by Banks VC's.
If Bitcoin fails due to "greediness" then I think it was doomed from the start anyways.
This is like blaming the failures of government on greed. Greed will always exist, we just need to stop giving it the vehicle within which to thrive. I'm talking about centralization (the state) vs de-centralization (the free market).
We know that greed/power can best be limited through free market competition and that greed/power concentrates with the existence of a state.
It is quite possible that BTC simply wasn't as inherently decentralized as we all wanted to believe. If that's the case then ultimately the the worlds nation states will dominate it and use it to control to an even higher degree than they can with the existing financial system.
I think my opinion is that if we're counting human altruism vs greed to steer BTC down the right path, then it's already not de-centralized enough and will fail. That's where we vote with our money and move to an alt-coin, probably one that doesn't exist yet.
I'm not sure if the blocksize debate is an issue of centralization vs decentralization though. Perhaps both options are good enough, at least for a few years or decades. I see a lot of fear and panic by big block advocates, but I see the concern about chinese miners having to much power. I also see the guys with Millions invested as deserving more say because they have the most at stake.
Can it simply be categorized as greed to want to protect your investment? Call this a dictatorship if you want, but how is democracy any different. You can still end up with a 51 - 49 split. Democracy is a tyranny of the majority. What happens if the voters decide the opposite of those big investors and ultimately causes the to lose $Millions? Those investors and all that expertise will just leave for somewhere else and BTC will die a slow death anyways. Ever read Atlas Shrugged? If you treat capital poorly it will leave and all that will remain are those leeches that tried to vote it away from them out of good intentions.
That being said, I'd probably vote for a 2mb increase immediately followed by Segwit, etc. later. Part of me would like to see a big shakeup just for the sake of keeping things exciting. I'm curious to hear how much it costs to setup a Classic node in my home.