Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, so there are many non-technical aspects of it that need to be properly handled. If the people working on the code take it upon themselves to make the non-technical decisions too, they need to be held responsible for the outcome.
This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control of government, but it's actually centralized under the control of a small group of unelected programmers (who seem to misunderstand how human societies, currencies, and contracts actually work), and there is no recourse when they make bad decisions except to fork the blockchain and the code. It's really a step backwards in terms of governance compared to, say, fiat currency with democratic governance. This applies to most cryptocurrencies I've seen, not just bitcoin.
Take a look at Tezos when it comes out. It tries to solve the governance problem with built-in governance and a system for promotion based on the will of the stakeholders.
If some large exchanges upgrade, and some don't, the consequences are similar to those of a code fork. Suddenly the currency becomes split into two different currencies.
This block size debate has been going on for years with Blockstream(Core) refusing to do anything about it aside from indirect fixes. Well before Bitcoin's 1MB blocks were full people were getting dismissed/deflected/denigrated due to bringing the subject up to the developers.
As the issue climaxed earlier this year Blockstream only proposed SegWit as a fix[1]. Segwit isn't even related to the block size issue directly. It is more applicable to Blockstream's business plans for rolling out for-profit Lightning Network nodes that use Bitcoin as a settlement layer.
So for years now Blockstream has done what? Threatened to edit[2] Satoshi's whitepaper while ignoring public consensus unless the public accepts their kludge of a 'fix?'
Fire Core. They are overtly driving Bitcoin away from the purpose it was created for, a "peer to peer electronic currency." They halted Bitcoin development after investment by AXA and others, turning their focus into creating for-profit products that use Bitcoin.
This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control of government, but it's actually centralized under the control of a small group of unelected programmers (who seem to misunderstand how human societies, currencies, and contracts actually work), and there is no recourse when they make bad decisions except to fork the blockchain and the code. It's really a step backwards in terms of governance compared to, say, fiat currency with democratic governance. This applies to most cryptocurrencies I've seen, not just bitcoin.