Wouldn't be easier for people to just start over with a new currency than deal with a hard fork?
Exactly. The confidence in Monero after the hard fork will be shuttered. It's much better to admit it and try again with new coin than to let the whole concept limp in the future because of the initial design problems.
If this hypothetical "perfect" cryptocurrency is ever designed, we can cross that bridge then. Hypothetically telling everyone how the hypothetical users of a cryptocurrency would react to a hypothetical hard fork brought on by the introduction of a hypothetical perfect cryptocurrency is...well...nothing more than your hypothesis.
In this instance we were just talking about a superior anon technology. Not a perfect currency. Just that one aspect.
Anyone speculating in anything fundamentally has to consider hypothetical situations and their associated probabilities.
My original question of whether or not being ready to hard fork XMR was the general consensus among the community still stands. I've found it incredibly rare for any community or dev team to ever be willing to change. Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin being the three largest examples. If Monero development is taking a more agile approach I would find that interesting.
Right now XMR is a bleeding edge crypto. Is the plan for it to constantly retain that position? There are big rewards for staying on top off all the latest trends and technologies, but that also comes with larger risk of course.