Re: The Barry Silbert segwit agreement with >80% miner agreement.
You're right, it's bad for companies (like Bitcoin Core) to make deals/decisions without asking the community's opinion behind the closed doors. 
It's almost entertaining to watch you ignore the fact that everything you say applies to the group you seem to be a fanboy of. 
You obviously don't follow the dev-list and the developer meetings on IRC. Everything Bitcoin Core does (it is not a company, btw) is suggested by the wider community, discussed among the wider community, thoroughly tested, peer-reviewed, tested and eventually sometimes deployed under more or less full consensus. Then, if it is a soft fork, 95% of the miner hashrate have to agree as well. You will never see this kind of childish closed door deals happen with Bitcoin Core. It's almost entertaining to watch you ignore the fact that everything you say applies to the group you seem to be a fanboy of. If Bitcoin Core would try a coup like this one, most of the developers would leave the project, and it would end up in the trash like "Bitcoin XT/Unlimited/Crashic/whatever". You may say it already happened, when Gavin stopped beeing a developer, and started behaving as a some kind of ruler who wanted to make decisions on his own without any kind of peer-review or discussion.
I remember it very well, yes. Coindesk had an article about it recently.
I never ever experienced a closed door at Bitcoin development. The developers there welcome any well founded opionions both on the mailinglist, on IRC and on github. Everything they do is public. There are no deals done behind closed doors.
Quote from: Investopedia
DEFINITION of 'Company'
An entity formed to engage in a business.
A company need not be profitable, designed for profit, incorporated, or even successful in order to be a company. Because, English.An entity formed to engage in a business.
Setting that aside, not all "Contributors" are "Developers" and this in an important distinction when it comes to the fact that the "Developers" are paid. So, by all definitions, Bitcoin Core is a "company" and the "Developers" (devs) are in charge of, and paid by/for said company. Because, English.
The developers are paid by a lot of different universities and companies, and some are not paid by anyone (e.g. students). Noone get paid by a company called "Bitcoin Core". Many are not paid for the work they do on Bitcoin Core, but the work may be done either on their spare time or as a project where they work.
As for the body of your thinking:
If you were right, a proposal that was slated for 95% and never got 40% would put Core in the direction that this thread wouldn't even exist (as it would be obvious that "the wider community" didn't want it).
Now, I'm sure that someone will try to make that argument that the pools are "in charge" and "the wider community" isn't represented by the wishes of said pools. The only problem with that logic is that "the wider community" has the ability to not mine in such pools.
The wider community don't mine. Almost all mining is done in China. Miners are just service providers. Important service providers, of course, but they depend on the rest of the economy to make any money. If exchanges and merchants don't accept their blocks, they are gone. What you see now is essentially a few Chinese service providers on strike. The rest of the economy, more than 90% of it, want the current proposal.If you were right, a proposal that was slated for 95% and never got 40% would put Core in the direction that this thread wouldn't even exist (as it would be obvious that "the wider community" didn't want it).
Now, I'm sure that someone will try to make that argument that the pools are "in charge" and "the wider community" isn't represented by the wishes of said pools. The only problem with that logic is that "the wider community" has the ability to not mine in such pools.