just go back and review the years and what happened, and how it happened.  I'm not going to allude to anything or try to tell you anything. There's no point because you're entrenched in your understanding. You need to just go back, it's 2024, so you have a solid 10 years of Bitcoin development to go through.  

This way, you'll come to your own conclusions. What you alluded to in your OP is the White Paper of 2008, and that's right - but you can't "consensus" change the protocol; it doesn't work that way actually even though they force it thus making soft or hard forks.

Anyway, just start digging