if only Doomad could wipe away the purple glaze in his eyes to finally see the negatives of the core team. he would then understand the negatives of "able to implement new features via softfork", which means that the normal nodes provide a LESS impactful part of the network then they did in the past.
Both of you only looking on a side of coin. While hard-fork on each features have less technical complexity (and i wouldn't mind it), but
1. you'd need consensus each time it happens (remember SegWit consensus took at 2 years)
2. older nodes won't run at all (as opposed have less impact/usefulness on soft-work)
3. forcing wallet, payment processor, exchange, etc. update their software or it won't run at all
1. segwit was not consensus. it was aparthied to fake consensus.. as your point three points out. to remain on the network after a consensus people need to update. segwit was implemented by throwing users off BEFORE the consensus number was reached.
a true consensus would only change its settings AFTER the majority of nodes decided they wanted the new settings.
2. segwits august aparthied campaign was more impactful than many other things that happened in the past. but again a TRUE consensus would only activate only in the event of a consensus..... thus impact is only 5%
segwit activated below 95% of usernode compliance, this just goes to show as my last post stated that core devs have bypassed the old priority that nodes would provide.
3. again not forcing.. of majority dont upgrade. it doesnt activate.. end of story. the confusion is the 2016 segwit bip was more consensus compliant. but only achieved 45%. thus no activation.. but the 2017 segwit bip allowed pushing nodes and pools off th network unless they complied to segwit..
this 2017 version was not true consensus. but pople still dont realise or even understand what consensus really is, nor how it should be achieved properly, which is wher people are not realising that the usernodes importance in the network has been deminished.
even core devs(paid by barry silbert) will admit that segwit activated only due to pools and merchants and it didnt need random hobby users nodes to do anything(backward compatibility)
.. that said. i can understand softworks used to just introduce new address formats. like the 2018 adding bc1q addresses. but when it comes to bigger settings like block sizes and how transactions should fit into a block. that kind of important thing should require proper and moral obiding consensus
pre-empt core fanboys hatred of consensus by saying "bitcoin is not democratic"..
those that want to rebutt. try to learn consensus. and if you still love the idea of consensus bypass.. learn the word tyranny, trojan horse risks and also centralisation