So you call yourself a "Free Market Capitalist" but you are afraid of a free market? Wow, I'm impressed.
A competition between chains will cause your wealth to evaporate. Therefore bitcoin must be a united entity.
Just like you dont want your leg or hands to fall off, and you want your own body to stay united.
FYI, hard forks have occurred in the past.
Not in bitcoin.
FYI, the only way both forks would continue on is if a subset of miners kept mining each fork.
And they would, miners would jump back and forth in panic, and eventually settle at 50-50% equilibrium half of them mining 1 chain and the other half another chain.
FYI, if that happened (it wouldn't), you would still control the same amount of "money" with the same private keys, it would just be divided across two chains.
Yea, but it still divides your money in half.