The nodes are the mass of the system. The bits have joules, thus mass; literally. A large fork of nodes is a large fork of the chains mass, 2 histories of physical bits.

The term economic nodes is loaded. For example an exchange is considered an economic node due to the amount of coins and velocity of coins moving, but this is a fiat economic node….exchanges don’t exist in a hyperbitcoinized world. They are ephemeral “economic” (fiat) nodes.