Im not sure Greg, things are only this calm because of the agreement.
Like it or not a significant amount of 'economic majority' want hard fork asap and most likely 'economic majority' want a 'reasonable' hard fork soon.
Possible relevant analogy: The economists telling the engineers to upgrade the servers because they think that is the right action. Like it or not a significant amount of 'economic majority' want hard fork asap and most likely 'economic majority' want a 'reasonable' hard fork soon.
How many times have we tried explaining why a X block size limit HF is pointless, and how it solves nothing? Take Segwit for example, it makes validation time scale down from quadratic to linear. Guess what? 99.9% of the people who read this don't even know what it means, nor have they ever heard of the O-notation. Some will just pretend like they do, but if they actually did they would not be requesting 'solutions' that solve nothing.
I agree with you but that does not change the fact that if not for the agreement reached the noise would be much louder now.
Its also important to acknowledge different perspectives and that both can perspectives can be right. 1 mb is a can kick down the road, but often can kicks are useful.
It would also install some more confidence into Bitcoin and could potentially unite the community. That would have big benefits but has nothing to do with the 'technicals'.