Unlike democratic policy, the votes for bitcoin policy are not 1 citizens 1 vote. You can claim that citizens have effectively no control (although they clearly do have some control). If you're not a miner you have absolutely no control. Even if you are a miner, your control is some function of your hash power.
The economic majority of Bitcoin users ultimately decides what "Bitcoin" even means and can enforce that against miners with e.g. a User Activated Soft Fork: https://uasf.co
As a user, I have about as much control over US currency. I can be very vocal, protest, and raise awareness for what I think is correct, but ultimately almost all decisions happen with governing bodies. And in the case of Bitcoin, the governing bodies are the miners and exchanges, which have very different incentives than the users.
If enough people leave a contentious network, the price falls. If you decide to use another chain, exchanges/wallets/miners become profit incentivized to support those chains.