I understand you believe that Bitcoin is doomed to fail ...
I never said I believe Bitcoin is doomed to fail, although my questioning it's viability may strengthen with developments. That should be everyone's position, because Bitcoin is an experiment. Those who think Bitcoin is guaranteed to succeed in serving the world are misunderstanding the situation. This doesn't mean it can't succeed at that, only that it's not guaranteed (how could it be?).
... because of insufficient central authority
My position isn't Bitcoin needs central authority. My position is Bitcoin needs a viable solution. If you read
the post I made above you'll see I asked whether the majority community could be convinced to accept Gavin's proposal
or one more like what you're crafting. My position was one of adopting a
viable solution.
In any case, even if you were right and such a thing were needed, that should not stop people from offering better ideas to those who are claiming to have authority.
Who has claimed any authority? Where? All I see is people putting forth their suggestions.
So you are about as wrong as anyone can possibly be, to suggest that just because someone claims authority, that they should make decisions and everyone blindly follow when they see clearly better solutions available.
Why?
Just for the sake of establishing authorities?
Like I said above, it seems you're arguing from a position of ideology. You seem to see resolving the block size issue as divided between those who tend toward centralization and those who demand absolute decentralization, even to the point of seeing people establishing positions they haven't.
That is the reason I question Bitcoin's viability. It's because people have their own thoughts about how things should work, or how things can work, and even if there is a solution which can work (I'm not saying which) it may not be possible to get everyone to agree, because it's not possible to do a Vulcan mind meld and have everyone understand everyone else's thoughts, conclusions, and informing information. People think differently (and with differing abilities). In the absence of some deciding force (usually a leader or authority as you call it) the result may be no clear decision whatsoever.
I'm simply seeking something which can
work, something a majority can agree upon, nothing more.
The ideology is: To the extent that arbitrariness can be squeezed out of the most elemental variables of the protocol, that ought be the fundamental design goal. The corollaries to this include what you have identified here,
a) that the more arbitrariness there is, the more the risk of needing future changes
b) the more changes needed, the greater the need for an leader/authority/deciding force.
c) the more authority driven changes, the more degradation there is on the value of Bitcoin's decentralization
Thus my purpose here
supports your goal of reducing that risk of stagnation for the future.
Thank you for re-characterizing your position.
Gavin's proposal is fit for immediate purposes, but it just kicks the can down the road for future readjustment. This is problematic in that it will then re-require this leader/authority/deciding force. Rather than accepting an extrapolation which is guaranteed to be wrong, we should look for one that self corrects so that we can look to solve this for future as well as today and dispense with the ongoing readjustments.
We ignore that at the peril of creating the very dystopian future you have imagined.
FWIW, I am still favoring the block size adjustment basis over the fee based adjustment, but there may be a way to combine the two and still maintain simplicity.