Imagine a gentle world in which the person you're responding to is merely commenting on the relative ease with which Minecraft could be optimized, and pointing out some of the reasons for this, without casting aspersions on anybody or complaining about anything. Would such a world necessarily look different from ours? Would it be inconsistent with the comments in this thread?

It's not even commenting that "Minecraft -could- be optimized", it's that "Minecraft -has- been optimized (for the mobile platforms)".

Only if your barometer of success is a monetary one. I happen to like playing Minecraft when I'm not making something and killing it and iterating (yeah bruv), and it makes my future computer from beyond the moon chug at times. (I don't point the blame at Java nearly as much as at the naivete of its development, however, and it has gotten somewhat better over time.)