If a given instance wants to experiment with democracy, that’s awesome!

Agreed and that's what I'm suggesting lemmy.world do. They don't have to, but it'd be nice if they did, even informally. A simple, "Hey, what do y'all think?" would be nice, before they make a decision that significantly impacts our collective experience.

As for preemptively defederating from trolls, I can appreciate the argument, and if that was the only justification given, I wouldn't be so concerned. But the admins also cited political opinions that fly in the face of their own branding: a "generic" instance "for the entire world to use". Had they included "you must love the World Bank and IMF", I wouldn't have joined this instance in the first place, just like I didn't join beehaw. It's not that I hate those orgs, but I don't want to be in an echo chamber.