Bitcoin is considered the ultimate tool of the free market, this is the reason it is popular in the cyberpunk, crypto-anarchistic and libertarian counterculture communities. Yet it is completely artificial and arbitrary with most of the values being modified by the selected few that own the bitcoin.org domain, the algorithm that controls the amount of Bitcoins created through time is also completely arbitrary.
I believe I have found the source of the problem.
The proof of work function needs special properties. So far, the only class of functions that have the properties we need are cryptographic hashes. Among the few cryptographic hashes available and trusted at the time of release, SHA2-256 provides the best tradeoff between dynamic range and length of output. Others could have been chosen, and can be chosen in the future, if some pressing need arises. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there is some function out there that does useful work at the same time. That would be the holy grail of proof-of-work systems, and lots of people are looking without results.
Then, there are fundamental constants. These were arbitrary (within a broad range) at the time the system was started. Why is 600 seconds the goal for the average block time instead of 500 or 700? Why was the initial subsidy 50 BTC rather than 10 or 100? No particular reason. But, once we started using bitcoin, these arbitrary constants stopped being arbitrary. Now we maintain them because we all agreed to them, and no one has the power to force a change.
And last, there are implementation values. These are the ones that are, in your words, "being modified by the select few that own the bitcoin.org domain".* Things like the fee for relay values, etc. These influence how nodes interact with each other, but don't change the fundamental rules of the system.
Also, there is a fourth class, protocol constants. These are really a subset of the implementation values, which is why I don't mind putting them after the "last" thing. These are things that would require wide adoption to work, but don't really change the rules of the game. For example, If we ever find that 8 places of precision aren't enough, we can make a new transaction version with a wider field and/or a different scaling factor. This would hard fork old versions off, but wouldn't change the rules of the system.
* Just for the record, that totally isn't how it works. The developers can make changes to the software, but they can't make anyone actually use it, so their power to change these values is limited by the public's willingness to accept their changes. And the software is totally open and free, so any person or group that doesn't like something can fork their own version.
It is rather naive to think so, the same kind of nativity is applied to politics where people actually believe that democracy is "fair" because every person has a choice. Gavin could replace the bitcoin-qt client at bitcoin.org overnight and let the stupid masses that don't know squat empower his flawed decision.
Tadaa, two years later we are at that precise point, as predicted by me.
Yes we could remain loyal to the 50%< (or more precisely 100%) of the hashing power which what everyone who has half a brain would do but Gavin is Gavin.
