It's the difference between a game of chess and a game of Nomic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic). Being able to change the rules makes every move much more powerful, and the game much more chaotic. If you have inequality between people who can make moves and people who can't, I think that dooms the system in the long run. (It may well be doomed in the long run anyway, but again, I think there's only one direction to go here.)
Yes, if it was a game that would be true, because (within the rules) you can't just walk away from the game, and there is only one winner.
However, software like most things in real life isn't a game. There aren't any rules. You can just fork it, or ignore it, or employ any number of other subversive strategies.
You keep thinking in zero-sum terms, and in ultimate terms like "doom" that I don't think actually apply to the domain.
How do you define "doom" anyway? Sounds like there's an objective you want the meta-system to be moving toward, but you expect it to fail. I'm not convinced there is such a perfect destination, or that there's anything like predictable determinism in the system.
