I'm surprised and disappointed that so many people on this thread (not to mention Gavin) are telling we who value decentralization to stick it up our asses.
I'm surprised and disappointed that so many techno-commies are involved with Bitcoin, to the point at which they can see problems that are an obvious result of a a lack of a price discovery mechanism and conclude that Bitcoin needs more central planning rather than more price discovery.
It's called the 'free market'. Try it sometime...you'll be glad you did. You Libertardian's brains are so muddled up with absurd 'sound money' and 'violence' word-salad nonsense that you cannot see the forest for the trees.
One of the beauties of sidechains is that price discovery hassles are off-loaded to the part of the system which is designed to handle it. That would be the Bitcoin part. What 'discovery' that is left is simply that which is driven by creating a good solution which people need.
I think many of you guys are all fucked up on how you (or someone) can make a dime off sidechains by scamming people and it is interfering with your analytical abilities. There is a sucker born every minute, and I'm sure some sidechains will be part of a system to separate them from their money, but these will be transient and an educational experience for the victims who would get the same experience some other way without them. The durable sidechains will be those which are created for the right reasons.