As a miner, you have control over:- How much you wish to invest in hardware
- What you do with your block reward coins
- The mining pool you want to contribute to at any given time
- Which software you choose to run and, causally, which chain you choose to mine
and how much you complain about how the other two groups don't agree with you (but you don't get to tell them what to do).
Would you agree that miners have more control than that, if they control a majority of global hash power? The chain with the most cumulative POW is considered the strongest chain (i.e. the main chain). Consideration of validity aside, a majority of hash power therefore is very meaningful to a lot of bitcoiners.
So I think it's helpful to think about this not from the perspective of
individual or
casual miners. A group of miners (which could be malicious), or a single chip manufacturer (i.e. Bitmain) could control said hash power. What then? What I'm getting at is, should we (as users) simply put up with such actors, and continue to follow the strongest chain? At what point (re, for example, miner centralization) would you say that splitting off from the network is worth it?
I agree that everyone is free to do whatever is in their power (how Stirner-esque)...the biggest hurdle I see is that users, by and large, are relatively new to the ecosystem. Many are largely non-technical and investment-oriented. In the short term, it makes sense for the herd to follow the longest chain, even if that might be detrimental to the system (re decentralization) in the long term.