But the rules can be dumb. The exponential decay of rewards is, in my opinion, wildly unethical and leads to great harm. It permanently creates a system of haves and have-nots. That a system that cannot be changed is not in any way evidence that the system is good.

We could imagine an alternative system that Satoshi programmed that, once per year, chose 5% of wallets at random and marked those coins as invalid, permanently destroying them. That would be an unchangeable system but it would also be idiotic. Just because there isn't a bureaucrat does not mean that there is no policy.