The entire point of cryptocurrencies is to be decentralized, that's the key innovation. As long as I trust the overall system, I need not trust any one individual. If you're using a cryptocurrency that's centrally controlled you might as well use a fiat currency, at least those are in theory regulated.
When it comes to ASICs, it's very difficult for you or me to buy them outside the US or China. Someone wanting to set up a mining farm with 500 of them can probably arrange something, but if I want to buy just one here in Iceland, I'm screwed. No one ships single ASICs to Iceland for a sane shipping fee. Most won't ship them outside the US at all.
As a result, almost all the hashpower in bitcoin is coming from the US or China, and from the rest of the worlds perspective that's not good. It is /definitely/ within the Chinese governments power to seize all of bitmains strategic reserve of chips and use them to perform a 51% attack on bitcoin.
The benefit of ASIC resistance is that it forces everyone down to graphics cards or at least FPGA boards, and both of those can be bought over the counter in any western country, so it spreads the hashing out geographically, which is desirable from a resilience standpoint. If ASICs were widely available it would be a different matter, but since they aren't, it's overall better to force them out of the game for now.
Doesn't it achieve opposite effect? All smaller, non ASIC resistant currencies can be bullied by someone with a lot of (rented) PCs. Ignore 51% attack, just sudden changes in difficulty & time between blocks would introduce chaos.
ASICs are specialized equipment which usually costs a lot. That leads to centralization, which is not something you want for a cryptocoin. Just look at bitcoin with their four people controlling a majority of hashpower.
Resisting single-chip ASICs, by large (on the order of a GB) memory requirements, may be desirable in promoting the use of commodity memory chips, which would account for most of the power consumption and hardware cost, leaving the ASIC tying the memory chips together much simpler, and running much cooler.
The majority of miners are not a lot more than hobbyists. I am, too. They prefer GPU mining because they know GPUs better than ASICs and because GPUs are more flexible than ASICs. The barrier of entrance to mining is lower.
Additionally, imagine you bought GPUs. Then of course you are going to oppose to changes destroying the profitability of your GPUs. If you then read about someone writing about ASICs fostering centralisation, you'll be inclined to approve such statements.
However ironically it has been shown that quite possibly GPU mining is more prone to centralisation attacks than ASIC mining.
When it comes to ASICs, it's very difficult for you or me to buy them outside the US or China. Someone wanting to set up a mining farm with 500 of them can probably arrange something, but if I want to buy just one here in Iceland, I'm screwed. No one ships single ASICs to Iceland for a sane shipping fee. Most won't ship them outside the US at all.
As a result, almost all the hashpower in bitcoin is coming from the US or China, and from the rest of the worlds perspective that's not good. It is /definitely/ within the Chinese governments power to seize all of bitmains strategic reserve of chips and use them to perform a 51% attack on bitcoin.
The benefit of ASIC resistance is that it forces everyone down to graphics cards or at least FPGA boards, and both of those can be bought over the counter in any western country, so it spreads the hashing out geographically, which is desirable from a resilience standpoint. If ASICs were widely available it would be a different matter, but since they aren't, it's overall better to force them out of the game for now.