Since there are clearly a lot more people doing Bitcoin development who DON'T work for Blockstream than there are that DO work for Blockstream, why is it that so many people seem to presume that Blockstream will somehow dominate Bitcoin development and pervert it into their own personal corporate tool?
Because there is nothing that guarantees they won't and everything already points that they already are.
But HOW will they do that? Since they are greatly outnumbered by non-Blockstream devs, how will they force changes that are self-serving on the rest of the development team?
Simply by not allowing consensus on any change on the bitcoin protocol. Wladimir already requires consensus among Core devs to do any changes. You only need 1 Blockstream dev that also work for Core to disagree with a change that threaten their business model and that change won't happen. That's why Blockstream and Core dev should be completely disassociated or otherwise Core development is being perverted by a
for profit company.
I imagine that many, if not most, core devs are employed by various Bitcoin-related businesses, ALL of which, presumably, are capable of having a conflict of interest - indeed, I would imagine that such conflicts are absolutely unavoidable, given a long enough time-frame.
Why single-out Blockstream? Just because they disagree with a change that you want?
It is the nature of all critical systems that one has to be very, very conservative about making changes to vital components, and Bitcoin is no exception. That necessity for conservatism
is advantageous to anyone whose interest is served by maintaining the status quo, and I think that is unavoidable.
It seems to me that your argument
assumes a priori that increasing block size is the correct and proper solution to the scaling problem (and a superior solution to the Blockstream/LN solution), and also assumes that the
only reason many devs (Blockstream employees AND others) might oppose that solution is because it serves their business interests to oppose it - even though I have not seen you present much in the way of actual facts to support either of those suppositions.
It does not seem fair to me to just say "the possibility of a conflict of interest exists, so therefore they are wrong".
It seems to me
possible that the Blockstream solution does a better job of maintaining decentralization while still allowing scaling of Bitcoin performance.
We should always be
wary of conflicts of interest; however, as I point out in the first paragraph above, those possibilities will ALWAYS exist - and we shouldn't presume that just because a
potential conflict of interest exists that any solution proposed by the
possibly conflicted party are immediately wrong.
If you really want to change people's minds, then you should make it clear why increasing block size is a technically superior solution to the problem at hand, rather than just screaming "conflict of interest!" ad infinitum.
(this until they are required for a something that only they will be able to provide) 