TL;DR:There are some elements about the coming hardfork that doesn't make it ideal for discussion or compromise. But the lack of consensus among the important stakeholders is, in my personal opinion, what makes it not viable for anyone with a stake in the system.
I'm a promoter of the legacy chain so you can downvote this post to oblivion but, if some of you is interested, I would like to share my view of the bottom line of everything I have read so far.
The main point, in my opinion is that Bitcoin is not ruled by a democratic system even because it is impossible to count the votes of all the stakeholders.
Bitcoin is a system where there must be total consensus on the status of the ledger.
It is then discussed if the ledger and the validation of the transactions should be in the hands of the users. My personal opinion is that this together with censorship resistance is the specific value proposition of Bitcoin. Without having the possibility to verify the authenticity of the money you receive with a software you control and without the possibility to send and receive the money in every part of the world, Bitcoin is in no manner different from other forms of digital money.
To be part of the network in a way that preserve the integrity of your holdings the software must be aligned to the same rules according which accept or refuse a transaction or a block.
To change these rules there must be consensus among the main stakeholders in the system, otherwise as we know, a temporary or permanent split will occur.
Now to simplify a bit who are the stakehodlers of this system?
Miners
Wallet providers and exchanges
Merchants
Developers
Users
To ensure a smooth upgrade of the system there must be consensus among a very large part of these categories and among the members of them, otherwise some of themcould feel left out or even loose money, if some sophisticated precautions are not taken.
Until now, the changes have been implemented in a way that have preserved the membership of each user in the system and the integrity of the funds has always been privileged , even of the oldest UTXOs.
This has lead to debate because changes have not been opt-in and some user have felt having been dragged into them. my personal opinion is that this is acceptable, if the change is important, but I can understand if someone can live this as a limitation.
Hardforks instead are opt-in but, if not everyone agree, their outcomes are unpredictable for the ones that stand outside an uncertain majority or simply doesn't share the view of the majority of the hashing power of that moment. If a solid anti replay attack strategy is not put in place, additional problems will occur and the strategy of refusing to put in place the anti replay measure to force furthermore toward the change, while interesting from a game theory point of you, is frankly irresponsible.
I personally am not at all against hardforks per se, I just think that to preserve the value of our investment, they have to be "universally agreed", and here we come back to the point: Ho can we state that a change is so necessary to risk a split of the minority not agreeing?
The hard reality is that We cannot tell today if an overwhelming majority wants an important change requiring an hardfork with the associated risks but the good thing is that we can say when this overwhelming majority doesn't exists and In these cases, I think it is better to avoid or to postpone the hardfork.
Very simply put, I disagree with your opinion of lack of consensus, in fact I disagree that you even require an overwhelming majority. Because the truth is the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin users do not know up from down about Bitcoin, yet many are content to buy anyways. I've been introducing Bitcoin to people for nearly 4 years in person, the number of Bitcoiners I've met with above rudimentary knowledge remains under 10 while the amount who I have explained Bitcoin to is triple digits. Likewise I am banned from /r/Bitcoin despite the fact I still prefer BTC over all other crypto, believe in the anti-fragility of Bitcoin, own more Bitcoin, use more Bitcoin, and have probably introduced more people to Bitcoin than 99% of /r/Bitcoin.
Examining rudimentary knowledge on the systems that govern Bitcoin. For example you keep stating that I should give a shit about "our" investment. Sorry but it is outlined by its nature that as a greedy honest individual I should care about only MY investment. My version of caring happens to include a blocksize increase in the near future, and we have been building up to that for the last 4 years. I am responsible to maintain a vision that leads to Bitcoin as P2P-Electronic Cash, not a Settlement Layer. I have absolutely 0 responsibility to your vision of Bitcoin, let alone your investment. If you believe that 1MB is fundamental to maintaining the decentralization of the chain, then go and code protection and fork yourself. Bitcoin, be your own bank, = PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I am not here to wipe your ass.
Frankly the cognitive dissonance is astonishing when you consider the rhetoric against hard-soft forks. There is insidious manipulation in stating that soft-forks are not coercive if not even more so in the case of UASF. Thought experiment in that lets say we had a minority fork of UASF in the case of Aug 1 flag day.
If for ANY REASON before a hard fork is implemented (after chain split), enough hash power moves to the UASF chain, all users of the LEGACY CHAIN are reorganized! Tell me how will that play out! Possible tens of thousands of transactions rendered invalid? Dissappeared? How will that play out for businesses that act as custodians or payment processors? And you are meaning to tell me that USERs are going to do what you say and look out for others investment? Fuck that, the only people who you could convince UASF wasn't garbage are the ignorant. That isn't a knock on it, it is simply fact, and the existence and push by Core is a stain for the exact same reason.
But in this case the EXACT SAME outcome will happen when upgrades that are coercive in nature are applied (so all contentious upgrades, because otherwise they are resigning themselves to the fate of an ALT which is NOT an upgrade). If you are the minority, you will add replay protection, you are responsible for your vision. To call it irresponsible, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you know what the hell you are talking about.