I disagree. In this situation, influences outside of consensus and the markets will
come into play. There are malicious and idealistic parties who are waiting for this
opportunity. For example, malicious actors will Ddos and attack the miners and
exchanges on either chains in order to influence the markets. What the users may
actually want, can be perverted and prevented by allowing "the markets" to decide.
All this is just a matter of "the markets decide". I try to avoid all forms of moral judgement like "fair", "malicious", etc... and I try to understand the dynamics of the system. After all, in a trustless system, there's no notion of "fair" or anything: it is whatever happens, and "all is permitted" because nothing is to be trusted. But then it is important to understand how such system behaves under all thinkable circumstances, as all is permitted.
So when I say "the users decide in the market", that includes all effects such as DDoS, attacks, and everything that goes with it and is the natural environment for trustless systems, because the market decides, taking into account these happenings and how the systems react to it.
All markets are manipulated and will be manipulated.
But that's part of a market, especially an unregulated one. So that is part of the choice.
I disagree. Any hardfork is contingent upon both miners and verifying nodes having
high consensus. Non-mining nodes only count for "zilch" when it is a Softfork. Otherwise,
verifying nodes are a complementary consensus structure in all hardfork types.
I think I've argued and presented enough proof that this is not the case. Maybe my proof is wrong, and someone can finally pinpoint an error in it.
When you talk about "users" voting and done so through the exchanges, that vote needs
to be determined before any fork occurs, not after. Users voting after the fork has occurred
is backwards and makes no sense. Relying on the markets is an illusion since they can be
manipulated so that it seems the users want one thing, when they are all voting for another.
No, of course not. The proof of the pudding is the eating. Toyota didn't want a vote first before it put cars on the market, to compete with General Motors (say). The only true vote is the one in the market. Other votes are "free" and hence unreliable. If you have to vote with money, you vote for real.
Satoshi created Bitcoin because these market systems are manipulatible. We can not now
fall back on these flawed systems to determine the future of Bitcoin that rejected those
old ways. It is contradictory IMO.
Satoshi cannot alter the laws of nature, and game theory. I could just as well try to invent a system where gravity doesn't make you fall. If something is designed to go against the laws of nature, it will do something, but it will not do what you intended. I think bitcoin is doing something, but not what it was intended (or at least, the publicly announced intentions).