It seems to me the real problem would be the community making a big
   deal about the fork, not the fork itself. Maybe the fork will take off,
   in which case anyone who has a position in Bitcoin now will have a
   position in the forked currency, or it won't, in which case who cares?
   Sure, Bitcoin might be less valuable for a while while people wait and
   see how the fork does, but anyone who thinks a hard fork is a large
   risk to Bitcoin compared to all the other risks it faces is deluding
   themselves.
   I think we would all be better off if the community said, "Fine, fork
   if you want. May the best fork win," than to sing doom and gloom every
   time someone decides not to follow the community process. Besides, a
   bunch of different people being involved does not a decentralized
   system make. Not if they all have to follow the same process and forks
   without consensus are not allowed. That can actually be worse in many
   ways than a benevolent dictatorship, because it will quickly ossify as
   the community grows larger and more diverse.
   If Bitcoin itself had to get community consensus before it was tried,
   we'd have no Bitcoin. I have no problem at all with someone deciding to
   fork it. In fact, I *prefer* it, because I think in the long run it
   makes my own position *more* valuable to have different forks trying
   different things. Anyone who holds Bitcoin before the fork gets the sum
   of the values of their account on each fork. Over the long run, the
   value on most forks will go to zero, but then it's at worst a max
   function.
   Claiming that forks make Bitcoin less valuable sounds to me a lot like
   Bernie Sanders saying we don't need so many choices of deodorant.