You don't get into a block.

That sounds like a hard fork then.

The activation height threshold is what creates the rules, but they're still valid to older nodes. I didn't say that it's a good experience. I said this could be used to destroy Bitcoin and more evidently show that the miners are in control. Invalidating new txns ≠ "Hard fork" hard fork is simply something that is incompatible with older software versions.

What happens when I try to spend a SegWit address that I don't have the private key for? I won't get into a block, right? On a legacy node, that is a completely valid transaction because the legacy node has no conception of the witness data. Is Segwit a hard fork then?

Legacy transactions are still valid.

That's what I just said, but they will never be mined into a block because they don't have a valid signature according to SegWit. UTXOs in SegWit addresses technically can be spent by anyone using a legacy node. The only reason none of those transactions make it into a block is because the miners enforce valid witness signatures due to version bit 2.

Right, so a transaction that doesn't follow this theoretical fork will get mined. Basically everyone can ignore it. The big bitcoin complex would create a disincentive for users to interact with them.

No. I don't know where you got that impression. I said the exact opposite.

Legacy transactions are still valid and will be confirmed.

Maybe you don't understand the scenario I'm laying out here. A legacy node(version bit 1), NOT a legacy transaction. This node finds a SegWit address with Bitcoin and produces a transaction without a signature. This is a valid transaction on the legacy node, but when broadcast to the network, anyone running version bit 2 or above will reject the transaction for not having a valid witness.

Old nodes would also see blocks without routing data as valid. If the economic majority does not upgrade, non-compliant miners can still mine valid blocks that old nodes accept. To actually win, the routing cartel needs the economy to upgrade their wallets to produce OP_ROUTE transactions. That is effectively a hard fork from a user perspective—and users have no reason to adopt it.

And my argument is that the users would just use exchanges to transfer Bitcoin from one person to another.(another centralization pressure.) And since the everyday user is not important or economically dense enough to matter, this would go through without a problem. Remember, my argument is that the mining companies and the exchanges would work together in tandem because they benefit each other in this arrangement. Since the suit coiners don't care about sovereignty they'll just use the exchanges to do their financial shenanigans and all of the real Bitcoiners(who don't actually have any power) would be left out in the cold just like the BIP110 people.

I swear I could explain this much better in person. Text is not my favorite medium of expressing ideas.

They can't force everyone to run the code. Just like Segwit or Taproot. As I mentioned before, anyone can still make legacy transactions and they are valid even though effectively all the miners are running Taproot. Also the amount of Bitcoin an entity has doesn't scale linearly with how much control they have over the network.

I am saying they can (if they have the current paradigm of majority hashpower) IGNORE all of the users who don't run the new version. Nodes who aren't corporate Miners and Exchanges don't matter. That's what we learned on Saturday. There is not enough decentralized hash power to even come close to competing with those five companies. And again, if you don't get on board with the Cartel, you'd have to switch to Ocean (unlikely with the current events) or another protocol that uses DATUM (who?). And I don't think any of these hashing warehouses are even close to ready to do something like that.

I see you’re point is ultimately about miner centrality more than the op_return thing that sparked the bip110 fork, and that, that is what according to you has revealed that “miners are in control” or rather the mining pools. But do you think the mining pools colluded to make the op _return the first leg in the boiling frogs play? Add in they were the ones that put the pressure on core? You said the miners you know don’t know jack about what’s happening on the network, by that do you mean they if you are listening, aimlessly provide hash to one of the pools that are the ultimate colluders? And are you saying that these miners (and by extension you presumably mean most if not all miners) will forever follow these mining pools towards a scenario of fully capturing bitcoin (what does this look like btw?)? What evidence can you provide for all of this? Because right now I see Bitcoin doing what it always does, I’ve changed my op_return seeing back to 43bytes. I just don’t see the colluding thing, I just see nodes not caring. Personally I believe the 20p nodes running knots was on the high end and was definitely to some extent artificially inflated.

Collusion is not necessary for this to occur. Everyone just follows incentives. The hashers provide hash at the lowest cost they can. The pools maximize revenue by including EVERY transaction they can (regardless of node rules). Exchanges nodes will always try to maximize the amount of Bitcoin they can purchase from miners. Making their relationship symbiotic. Core are coders first and the more feature rich you can make a program, the more you can do with it. All of this culminates in the mining pools effectively setting the rules of the network. I have expressed how this could be exploited to get even more control but THAT requires collusion. The issue is they didn't realize they were in control until last Saturday. As far as the UASF there was no URSF meaning the miners have the option to do a MRSF. But, normally people would say "The hashers would move their hash out of a pool that goes rogue. The hashers did not do that. I think they are complacent and will go along with whatever the pool pushes.