Bitcoin is not an experiment in free market money, but an experiment in permissionless money.
The goal is to survive and prosper, not to determine whether theoretical economic principals hold true.
yep but the devs have got paid millions of dollars and now think they are 'market experts' their latest code is about pushing fee's and offering discounts to bribe people to use it. rather than using real code to reduce risk of abuse and issues.
things have changed since 2013-2014, and not for the good
The Bitcoin system was centrally planned with rules, restrictions, and limitations.
The way to remove those rules, restrictions, and limitations is by Decree or Consensus.
Pure Consensus came about in 2013-2014 after Gavin stepped down, ending the Decree era.
Prior to 2013-2014 the central planning was run by divine right and a line of succession.
Now the network/community decides what the future brings from public proposals.
If the network/community has majority of Consensus for a proposal, then so be it.
If the network/community does not have majority of Consensus, then so be it.
The devs who worked on SegWit are only attempting to provide one answer to a group of
problems by using the softfork method. If SegWit never gains majority of Consensus,
for whatever reason, then it is controversial. If other devs wish to provide their proposal in
a softforkable method, they are free to do so and the network will evaluate. If they choose
to go down the hardfork route, then they accept that it will be considered controversial and
chances of acceptance is low. SegWit devs attempted to think outside the box with what
they had to work with.
For the article to say that Bitcoin devs are now acting as central planners is a deceptive tactic that
ignores how Bitcoin functions. It is written to beat the drum and ensnare the economic ideological
users into thinking that Bitcoin "only now is being centrally planned" and "that is wrong".
Bitcoin's whole existence and its future will be centrally planned and it will be done so by Consensus.