Fair comparison mostly.
I would characterize Bitcoin as a semi-capitalist anarchist decentralized system
Since you have to have capital to run a node and to vote, so it's similar to the "only property owners can vote", but it's not like a corporation where you vote based on your % stake. And also miners and other institutions have leverage as well, so it's a complex 4 sector power system (developers, media , miner, exchange) that can influence the users, but basically it's still based on nodes and their vote.
I would characterize Dash like a democracy of nodes
Since every full node is 1 vote. Now this is essentially similar to Bitcoin, but it's more self-governing and more sovereign than Bitcoin. You still receive inputs from other entities, but it's the nodes that vote
So they are both similar in the sense that the nodes need to spend resources to exist, and nodes vote only, so it's a representative democracy, however everyone can setup a node, but the difference is that:
Dash does reward nodes from the reward pool, while Bitcoin doesn't.
So Bitcoin will inevitably centralized in nodes, as it only relies on altruism for people to host full nodes, whereas in Dash you get paid for it. So we shall see if altruism works or not (probably won't).
I would disagree with your characterization. You clearly understand the differences but those differences do not result in many of the outcomes you assert. You might see the node incentive as very important but I will argue that Bitcoin's nodes are incentivized and will not centralize. If you are worried about centralization, look into who owns most of the DASH nodes.
There are also a lot of issues with the masternode setup with respect to Sybil attacks. This is exasperated by DASH node centralization. The price of DASH is very easy to manipulate due to the high percentage of illiquid DASH held in the many masternodes run by a very small number of people.
No they are not, the cost of running a node is increasing , necessarly by cost but by logistical pressure. Sure HDD space costs, as well as transistor computing costs have been sharply decreasing, and even energy costs can decrease with alternative power systems. But practically speaking it's not practical for everyone to setup the technical machinery, especially if that involves loud fans and a lot of electrical engineering and cooling systems in a residential area.
So running a bitcoin node will most likely become a dedicated service, which will become an oligarchy. Now there is nothing wrong with that, Ancient Rome was an oligarchy initially, and it functioned very well, taxes were minuscule and the economy was booming.
Whereas Dash deliberately diverts resources in order to subsidize, at least economically, all nodes, in order to maintain the democracy. So people can rent out a cheap space and run a node, knowing that they will get paid for that, so technically anyone can do that.
I am not familiar with that.
I disagree, currently Bitcoin miners are no better than this, they have most of the money, not to mention the BTC exchanges, that act as custodians for many many people. At least DASH tries to push back against the centralization by having a self paid development team, that serves DASH, and not special interests.
And my argument is always that economic inequality is not a threat if political inequality is contained. In Bitcoin you can have an elite that can just buy off a lot of the community to serve his will.
At least DASH can somewhat defend against this if the voters are subsidized, to keep the decentralization.
Just because the type of user who will run a node in the future may not be the same as those who run full nodes today does not mean that will cause centralization. Satoshi makes this point very clear. It will always be possible for the small user to verify the blockchain for themselves - it just might much more economical to use a SPV wallet or light client. You still verify all the hashes.
Most of these "benefits" you mention with regard to these incentivized master nodes are actually part of the problem. Just because you see Dash advertise all these 4.4k masternodes, don't think there is 4.4k diferent people each voicing their opinions behind those. This is the Sybil attack vector against Dash. In conjunction with the rocky start of Dash, this amounts to an extremely large problem.
Bitcoin has none of these issues.
As if in Bitcoin all nodes were real. Just a few months ago you basically had somebody set up 500 Amazon hosting BTC nodes, that were shut down a few weeks later since the free trial expired.
But at least DASH does subsidize people to run free nodes, so people could run them if they wanted to, and they have the financial support to do so.
Sybil is an attack vector against any crypto not just Dash, and I think Bitcoin will be the first target, because miners are already doing nefarious activities, like the backdoor meetings in Hong Kong or whatever.
I would not trust them the least, and they have the resources to mount a Sybil attack.
Yeah sure it is, but your missing the point completely with dash. A Sybil attacker in Bitcoin does not have much power at all - they still would need hashrate to do anything.
With dash, there is the economic fee of locking 1k dash for becoming a node representing quasi-stake. This fee is so trivial, especially to actors who were able to acquire a large amount of these tokens for "free". The low expenditure of value required coupled with the power of masternodes is absolutely ripe for masternode collusion and centralization.