Yes.  Pegs are completely discredited in economics simply by their history of abuse.  It seems a poor choice of term to recycle for use to describe the Side Chain exchange process, but then... they didn't ask our opinion. 

They could strengthen the ruble by selling some government property, buy rubles for the proceeds and destroy them, or, these days of debt, repay some debt or stop rolling it over. They could probably cut all taxes and run the government on selling land for a decade or so, while using the timeout to fire all government officials. It will be done if it is in the interest of the current powers, which it isn't.

The very first thing to understand about Bitcoin is that its store of value function is at least an order of magnitude more important than its payment or remittance functions. Very roughly speaking, something like 90% of the value of Bitcoin is in something the government cannot possibly replicate without relinquishing control of the money supply. They could create digital money, but that wouldn't touch the lion's share of Bitcoin's value proposition.

I agree with this, but I think a better term for the value proposition is "neutral money", instead of "store of value".  Bitcoin eliminates trusted authorities.  If the system has trusted authorities, it does not compete with bitcoin.

I wrote a short article about this here: https://gist.github.com/weissjeffm/ab8e157e7d7943b07310

The very mention of "fixed supply monetary standard" shows a misunderstanding of what money is in the first place. Here I mean money the system, not the actual units. Money is a ledger tracking who owns what percentage of the total claims on goods and services in an economy. This ledger has historically been maintained using pieces of scarce metal, paper promises by a central issuer, and now in the most natural and direct way: as an actual ledger (Bitcoin).

If you keep thinking about "currency" and "money supply" you will never understand money. Thinking in terms of percentages, it is clear that "money supply" cannot be expanded - only the ratios of who owns what can be changed. When a miner gets a mining reward, no "new money" is created, even though such phrasing is familiar in everyday talk. All that happens is the percentage of the total ledger all current holders own decreases slightly, while the miner's percentage increases. The very same thing happens when a gold miner finds a nugget or the Fed prints a billion dollars. Only the ratios change.

This is why, again, the whole implication that "something untoward might happen if we do this unprecedented thing where we have a fixed money supply" or "won't something bad happen if money supply doesn't grow with the economy" is based on a pure misconception. To quote a recent reddit post, "It's like saying you need to continually increase the number of inches in a foot as your child grows in order to measure his height."

We may be in agreement here. I would argue that there is a chance block rewards will need to be reworked, though not in a way that will affect current holders much, or at least not for a very long time.

A better way of making the point I want to make is that the bar for scrapping the entire ledger is extraordinarily high. If reworking the coin issuance schedule is necessary, it makes sense to do just that rather than have a completely different competing ledger.

Turning to an argument based on magnitudes, if we assume the "backup ledger" is worth 10% what Bitcoin is, the Bitcoin ledger would have to be something like 90% screwed up before it would make sense to change over. Coin issuance changes wouldn't be that level of change, at least not for maybe several hundred years(?).

There has never been a money supply that has grown at a constant predefined and unchangeable rate, without regard for monetary demand (another mathematical construction that doesn't correspond with gold). That is happening now, not 100 years from now.

But even things that happen 100 years from now can affect the present (or near future), by discounting of expectations.

As for why it is a concern, it is simply that it is structurally different in an unprecedented manner. Again, you may thing it is the greatest thing since sunlight and rainbows, and it may turn out that way, or it may not. Bitcoin is an experiment in progress, and multiple outcomes are possible. If you claim otherwise you are dishonest or deluded.

Good thought, and I like where that article is going.

There are many relics from the old way of thinking about things. From the days of gold to fiat, the idea of "backing" became important. Then Bitcoin, analogous to gold, came along with the 21M coin limit. That said loudly to those familiar with gold vs. fiat that "no politician can inflate this at their whim." However, ultimately what matters isn't that there's a hard limit, but that the limit is neutral, as you say, and (as a consequence of neutrality) quite predictable with low inflation.

I say "quite" predictable because if (if!!) there were ever an absolute need to change the issuance schedule, say due to sidechains disrupting mining, it could would only be done in a neutral way since people would freely decide which schedule to adopt so it wouldn't be political. The result would never be chaotic or result in high inflation or the enrichment of some politically connected people at the expense of others. That doesn't sell quite as well as the 21M coin limit (which is sort of false because of mining fees), but since ultimately people just need sound money (neutral money), and we have decades to go between now and then, the nuances should be more appreciated by then, especially when Bitcoin is mainstream and not fighting just to be noticed.

".. ensuring greater transparency [...] in the way people live their life..."

"Why somebody need to be anonymous? I certainly don't want somebody mining technology or mining financial services away from my control."

Fuck you Mr. Matthew Driver, you are dangerous.