A fork (Soft/hard) should happen no matter how long It takes, I never meet anyone who agrees that bitcoin should stay as it is right now. If bitcoin stays as it is then there will be a problem in the future and It's only going to make people stay away from it.
My idea is that a crypto currency's protocol should remain as it was the day that it got started - I'm even convinced that a sufficiently decentralized crypto currency CANNOT change its protocol. If it can change, it means that there is a form of leadership, and hence, is not a decentralized system. If it can change, it is not permissionless, as we have seen with ethereum, and there is a "board of central bank governors" that proposes and decides, can censor, can print extra money, can modify the rules to suit them.
You are right of course that a given protocol, if it turns out to contain problematic features, will make people go away from it, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Crypto currencies come and go, and each of them has a certain life time during which it has some importance in the market. Bitcoin has the huge first mover advantage, which will take a long time before it erodes sufficiently away, but I wonder whether it will change. If it does, it means it is centralized.