You said people do what Vitalik says. Ethereum Classic is the prime counter argument that this is not true. It almost flipped Ethereum, split the community, and completely wreaked the price.
That's not supposed to happen if everybody follows the supreme leader.
Yes, that happened, but in the long run it failed and Vitalik still reigns supreme over the original Ethereum, despite him breaking one of the central promises of Ethereum in that scenario (the promise that "code is law").
Ethereum is better than the other complete scam coins, it's not a total scam. But it's not really permissionless and decentralized like Bitcoin.