It's taken seriously because "code is law" is (was) the premise of Ethereum's value. The blockchain isn't about consensus, it's about the use of mathematical (rather than political) consensus to maintain immutability. By removing all the messy human factors and defining it all in terms of cryptographically secure mathematical consensus, it was supposed to be this superior platform, and that's a big part of what drew the techno-libertarian digital nomads to it: the promise of a clean, unambiguous financial system outside human control.

Except then they hard forked, proving that political consensus still rules. The benefits of crypto-secured mathematical consensus are still subject to politics and messy human institutions. "Code is law" is a lie.

The funny thing is, this is a corner they painted themselves into. If they'd planted their flag only on decentralization, automation and trustlessness, and ignored "code is law", they wouldn't be having this problem today. Ethereum would be a technological advance on what we already accept: human economics.