Very true. I guess saying they are superior is just a quick way of talking about the trade-offs. Superior perhaps in the way that some people think when they talk about a useful currency. Which is something I have talked about many times, I don't think bitcoin will really ever be. One that can be used as a currency, sure, one that is widely used as a currency, probably not. More like a settlement layer that where value can be moved rather easily.
I think people's need for Bitcoin to be a currency is misplaced. Just because we call it cryptocurrency because developers aren't very creative doesn't mean we need to force that ideology onto the network. The same can be said for all the perceived competition that doesn't exist in this co-op. Bitcoin can do its thing and something else can be a better currency... and that's fine. I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary bickering to the contrary when it comes to projecting competition onto the open-source sphere.
Another issue is the one of cornering the mining market. Bitcoin takes the lion's share when it comes to network security using POW. I think a lot of people mistakenly ignore this fact when it comes to considering other POW coins. Security matters a lot more than people give it credit. One of the nice things about POS and DPOS is that the security of one project has no effect on the others.