There are thousands of miners all over the world, I am one of them. There are five Core developers with commit access and only one person who has the final say in Core. I think most people here will know that what I am saying here is true.
There are actually seven developers with commit access. Who do you claim has the final say, and how so?
I believe it is Wladimir who has the final say as the lead developer for Core, and the seven developers with commit access each have veto power over each other as well. Thank you for the correction.
There are 11 major mining pools. The pool operators have the final say on what the pool mines. Even though you are a miner, you have no say in what goes into the block. You could of course change pools if you don't like what the pool is doing, but if no other pool does what you want, then solo mining or starting your own pool isn't going to make much of a difference in anything. So when it comes to mining, only the pool operators of the 11 major pools actually matter, and they make mining centralized.
Maybe we should agree to disagree on this point, I have argued extensively that this is not the case. I have argued that the pools are like a form of representative democracy for the miners. The pools serve the miners, it is the miners that have all of the power in this relationship, since they control the hashpower. I think that Bitcoin even depends on this presumption, this is part of the game theory behind mining. If what you where saying where true it would mean that Bitcoin is fundementally broken today, I do not think this is the case. I suppose you think that Bitcoin is broken and that Core has to fix it.
I have the freedom of choice by choosing which pool to mine with. If there are no pools that exist that support my point of view a new pool can be created and if there are enough people that think this way it will be viable. Even the situation today is prove that is the case. We have pools supporting both sides of the blocksize debate presently, some pools even giving people choice within the pool itself.
By deciding on the blocksize they are deciding on the price of transacting on the network. I was referring to blockspace when using the term supply, that in a supply and demand economy, the miners represent the supply for blockspace, and the users the demand. Whereas Core does not actually fit into this model at all.
The developers are not supplying anything except code. Like you said, the miners determine the supply of block space, and the miners can choose whether they want to use one implementation or another, the core developers aren't forcing anyone to do anything.
Exactly, this is what I have been saying. This depends on the will of the participants of the network as well. If people do not think they have a choice then surely they would not make that step. People being well informed makes a big difference.