I like your take very much, as the moto goes since the beginning, one node one vote, proudly running several nodes myself, but mining hash rate matters, a lot!

Maybe you know this already and if so, my apologies, but, miners have an enormous power, the majority of the hash rate is the code of the network, if centralized in few companies or countries, risk management is required, they could hard fork Bitcoin into whatever they want it to be, create another war like the one we had with BCH, that was ugly, suffice to say it was not easy, if you were around you know what I am talking about...

https://m.stacker.news/42167 source: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools

As you can observe, Bitcoin mining is not decentralized enough, and, in terms of hash rate, 2 companies control more than 50% of the hash rate which is already not good, but more important, one country controlled closely by the government, has 51.89% of the hash rate. Risk management is required. And China, most probably wont advocate for transaction privacy.

Being humble matters, understanding the dangers and preparing countermeasures is important and we are not in a good position, the cultist, the maximalist with attitude and the ones that have not study enough the risk case scenarios and only care about the green candles will tell the masses otherwise, all is well, Bitcoin doesn't care, and so on, but the truth is, we can't be complacent.

You can choose to run in your node the Bitcoin Core version you like, your node your vote. Most Bitcoiners will say, if we all run in our nodes the version A they can't beat us. And that is partially truth, yes, you will keep running your version of Bitcoin and now there will be two chains, and you will have the same amount of the token in both networks.

Both will be called Bitcoin?

No, now it comes the next layer of consensus, equally important; wallets, merchants, centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, specially the wallets and exchanges, they will name and route in their platforms BTC with the network they agree, being the one you like or not, as it happened with Bitcoin Cash.

Any one who agreed with Roger Ver version of Bitcoin was running a BCH node, and therefore needed not only the node but a different wallet as well, and it was not able to deposit or withdraw from Coinbase (for example) anything but the old Bitcoin using an old version of the node or an old version of a Bitcoin wallet. If Coinbase and other CEXs plus major wallet providers at the time agreed with Roger Ver vision, Bitcoin today would be something else.

Another Bitcoin war would be too messy, too complex and crazy expensive, that is a deterrence, therefore, changes will require consensus, one that can be achieved via gas lighting, propaganda, paid shills (influencers), buying key players and so on would be the most probable vector of attack to soft fork instead of hard fork.

Because is very expensive to compete with this companies, ASICs are not cheap, although there are some initiatives that are important, but we are not there, exactly what Satoshi said will happen, and here we are.

I wrote this article in Aug 2023, check the section "Attempts to control the asset in the long term", I develop ideas on potential attack vectors and countermeasures