All well known arguments, though yes, private blockchains are "just another database", because distributed databases have also been around for already 20 years at least, e.g. the Paxos algorithm.
The crux of the matter we long-time bitcoiners are mostly talking about is the question Why now? Banks and corporations did not seem much motivated to innovate like that for the last decades. They ought to feel some pressure now, don't they? Pressure from this shady internet drug money thing they don't dare to mention because it in turn questions everything they build their foundations on. And this is the point.
Agree. To top that, modern cryptography, Tor, and also many others were either the inventions stemmed from initiations of government bodies or deployed for secure communication/secret services use. Only due to the Internet boom did these inventions became widespread. So to say, the new technology such as BTC which sits on the developments of the above mentioned, can ultimately be traced back to the long debated World War to Cyberwar, the war on drugs to Silk Road etc...
Perhaps this is yet another way of looking at it too~
=)