> you are the one who's trying to make the case that the ability to make a derivative work of Bitcoin means that PoW has somehow failed
No, I never said this and this another straw man. The point is that the most-work chain is allowed to be ignored if the politics are done right. You just need the right people pushing for adoption of the minority chain, and to label the most-work chain as an “attack” or a “bug”. In this event, there is no protocol defining which chain gets the name “Bitcoin”, it becomes a game of power, of who has more social capital in the space and who can maneuver exchanges and users into agreeing which chain is “real” and which chain is “pretender”.
Maybe a picture will help: imagine all the existing investors who strongly insist on deflationary policy are gone in 100 years, and they get replaced with folks who care a lot less about “sound money” arguments. Imagine devs, exchanges, miners, all agree that a constant supply inflation would be preferred. Then, all they need to do is release a new version of reference software that keeps the block subsidy in perpetuity, and make a very strong case that this fork is for the security and stability of the Bitcoin economy (to make that case here is beside the point). In this example, the handful of folks who will be fussing about Austrian economics and declaring “that chain is not the real Bitcoin!” will be relegated as outcasts, even if they insist on keeping the name “Bitcoin” and release an “original Bitcoin” client, it won’t matter, because the market will have decided for them which chain the rest of the world uses. And it’s this chain that wins the political game that will keep the name “Bitcoin”.
Again, the argument for which monetary policy is best is irrelevant, and how likely you see this event as happening is also irrelevant. The fact that this hypothetical is even _possible_ and that Satoshi’s system doesn’t preclude it from happening, is the argument for why proof-of-work fails. PoW is ultimately subject to politics which means the whole system is subject to politics.
You can also look at the BCash fork itself. The events leading up to that fork were not smooth at all, and the outcome of the fork was wholly uncertain at the time. Popular blockchain analytics sites had public trackers of which ideology had more brainshare, devs drew the party lines, exchanges issued statements declaring party allegiance, miners signaled support in their blocks, users took to Twitter to unite the herd. If Roger/Gavin/Mike had been the only ones with a public platform and Core had never responded with their own campaigning, miners would’ve easily abandoned the “real Bitcoin” and Coinbase and crew would’ve easily pushed for the fork to keep the name “Bitcoin”. It is the political campaigning of the incumbent party that kept them in power and that kept the hash rate on that chain. None of these mechanics are outlined in any Bitcoin whitepaper I know of.