Your point seems to be that first mover advantage is everything. I agree, when comparing Bitcoin to alt coins. But I don't consider forks of Bitcoin as alt coins. I see them as different implementations trying to reach the same goal.
Please advise how you feel that BCH met the criteria of Nakamoto consensus as briefly described in the last section of the white paper. AFAIK, the BCH chain never was the chain of most work at any moment. Also, the BCH chain was not compatible with the BTC chain from the moment it split due to it invoking replay protection. It's definitely an "alternative" to BTC and therefore is an altcoin. At least when BU was running on the BTC chain, it was totally compatible with BTC. It's emergent consensus would have let the miners decide via Nakamoto consensus how large the blocks were. BU qualified as a "different implementation." BCH ABC does not.
They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of
valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on
them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfI have no idea if LN will be free of goverment interference or not. Maybe some countries will force all Bitcoin transactions through government controlled nodes and sending freely on chain would be illegal (enforced by deep packet inspection). I don't think anyone really knows how LN will end up. I hold Bitcoin forks to hedge against the possibility of LN becoming a failure.
Since LN is a second layer, if it fails, then 1st layer, BTC, will still function. It is better to argue that segwit is somehow vulnerable or insecure. If true, and it can't be modified or patched. then that is an issue. However, I'm not certain it is indeed insurmountable to come up with a patch, as some would argue, if a vulnerability was found. May be quite painful, but not impossible.