This is part of the reason why bitcoin remains highly speculative. People point this out like it's a bad thing - the only people who have it are just investors, speculating. But this is part of the process that bootstraps bitcoin's value, so that when it does become more practical to use, actual value is being transferred.
Let's use the US dollar as an example. In what ways do you think it could be improved if people could fork it?
What follows a fork is a competing variant. From a consumer's vantage point, this is almost always good. More competition creates such a great incentive structure that usually(but not always) serves the customer well.
However, the if you look at it from the vantage point of a stakeholder such as an active developer, speculator or an investor, then a fork seems unquestionably detrimental. You'd want a monopoly in this case.
In what may seem to many as a severe case of cognitive dissonance, I'd submit that both of these scenarios are useful and that the only caveat is that they apply at different stages of an endeavor's development i.e. in the early years when a product is nascent, I think competition is actually good. By giving consumers choice, the best product naturally rises to the top. In later years when a product/market is mature, I personally don't mind a monopoly because it grants advantages of scale that would otherwise not be available to a smaller outfit.
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If the US dollar forked, or an EU country left the Euro, it would widely be considered a disaster and a failure of politics and governance. Why should bitcoin be held to a different standard?