I can't afford to read 100+ posts on this subject again, so I'll just address OP. Pardon me if I'm repeating something that has already been said.
Right now you are a sovereign in Bitcoin. You should never give that up, under any circumstance.
What do I mean with sovereign? Well there's nothing anyone could possibly do that can make you accept rules you didn't agree with. Nothing. You yourself have to decide to consent to a rule change. But if running a full node becomes impossible for you then all that which you were told about Bitcoin, that rules virtually can't change, that it has a strict limit of 21million, ect, all these rules will then be left to be decided by a small number of super nodes and the people who control them. The second this becomes reality Bitcoin will be no different than simply a slightly more transparent Paypal. And if you don't want that you better make damn sure you can run a full node.
Hazek,
It seems you want Bitcoin to be an absolute trust-free system to anyone
Nope. Just me.
But... how do you even know, for sure, that the code you're running really does implement the contract you claimed to have "signed"?
Peer review + github making it extremely easy to spot.
If you can trust the openness of the source code to provide enough reliability for you to use it, why can't you trust the openness of the blockchain to provide the same reliability?
Because I'm not a peer anymore and I have no say in what the rules are anymore. Right now if the network wants to keep me as a blockchain validating, transaction propagating, block validating peer, they need my consent to download a new client. If I can't be such a peer anymore the network will give a rats ass about what I want because they'll control all the peers.
The blockchain is open, and as such, it can be validated by anyone with the means to.
Well there's the rub then isn't. What if just a very small group of people has these means? retep seems to make a pretty good case for exactly that happening if the block size limit is increased.