That's generally a good complaint about "just fork it", but there are some additional factors here. One - every Ethereum update is a soft fork of the protocol

That's generally a good complaint about "just fork it", but there are some additional factors here. One - every Ethereum update is a soft fork of the protocol Two - they are required to be soft forks by the very existence of the difficulty bomb. Three - running a blockchain is already a social activity that requires everyone participating to opt in to the same protocol. I don't think it would be easy, by any means, to convince the community to move a different direction than that desired by the core devs. But my main point is that the difficulty bomb is a mechanism to force soft forks frequently. It is not a mechanism to force any particular long term path.