Perhaps you’re overlooking the fact that the core devs messed up. By reducing the fee for segregated witness data, they inadvertently created an incentive for non-financial data. Now we have 4 MB blocks filled with spam jpegs.

Has there been a post mortem or any accountability?

As you know, lines of code == bugs and even bug free code (like segwit) can change network dynamics.

Ethereum is another good example of what happens when devs are given free reign to make whatever changes they want.

We’re playing the long game here. IMHO we shouldn’t allow any further changes to the core for 10 years and just do maintenance.

By that time, any good ideas will be well tested outside of core and we can have a better sense of their possible side effects.