The problem is those people treat Satoshi as a god when they should be adjusting his poorly conceived inflation schedule with a hardfork.
Bitcoiners are stupid but they're not that stupid.
I don't follow? I don't think it is very easy to hardfork bitcoin, but do you think adjusting the inflation downwards would be that damaging? It would put off the miners but the reduction in downward price pressure could easily make up for it. Smooth out the blockreward differences...
I agree that mathematically Bitcoin would benefit from adjusting the inflation downwards but even though their flawed supply structure may prove to be their long-term downfall, changing their 21 million Bitcoin supply rules, would mean a transition from being viewed as a digital gold type money (pre-determined supply) to one whose supply is controlled/altered by people and potentially a small group of people at that.
People assign value correctly to and adopt forms of money that require the least trust in people, (Because people can't be trusted & are 'short-termist' ) such as gold, silver and more recently Bitcoin. Altering the pre-determined supply rules would require you to trust people more going forward resulting in substantial value loss.
I think most Bitcoiners and crypto-currency holders understand some version of this general idea/concept and it's unlikely they would risk losing their digital gold status as Bitcoin's value is almost exclusively derived from the use of their tokens as money. (Unlike BTS whose shares now derive value from expectations surrounding the products and services based on it's blockchain like BitAssets.)
Ahh I see. I think such things are all perception and if the inflation is largely removed and results in fewer coins or the same longterm max then I have to wonder if the result would be so drastic. It really is psychology, part rational and part irrational. Very hard to know what the results would be.
It is pretty simple math to look at the downward pressure created as the market cap increases. This problem will still be there even when the blockreward halves.
The truth about global warming is starting to become quite apparent. (yes it exists...for those who think it is political ... I can't even fathom) The popularity of a global currency is going to be constrained somewhat by the power consumption. Honestly, when I first heard of Bitcoin that is what turned me off. "backed by electricity".
edit - It really comes down to having people perceive that the change is the result of consensus.