Bit snippy this morning Mr Radish? I'm suggesting that an agreement has been reached that folk is a certain thing - judging by the endless discussions on here - and in the OP I'm asking if 'it's' people instead.
Jim Carroll is a wise counsel on many topics but he seems to believe folk can be reclaimed as a word that means, well, we all know what he thinks it means, which qualifies him as a dreamer, splendid chap though he is in many ways.
Winning the argument is always fun but it depends who's doing the arguing and about what. I've always believed folk revival is built on heady mixture of Merrie Olde England (add country of choice) and self delusion but that much of the music is quite splendid. It just doesn't bear scrutiny as authentic in the linear way it claims. An example. Soldiers have been fighting wars overseas for centuries. Having heard the local tunes and picked up a smattering (or a proper dose) of the local culture they return home with a new instrument and a different set of songs which their friends and family pick up and before you know it East Sussex or the West Riding are performing French or Balkan traditional music.

If you buy into the viral theory of infection eliminating indigenous musical memes (to mix a metaphor), it didn't start with Elvis's pelvis or even peculiar musical hall acts but is in the DNA of the sound and if the sound then the folk. You're ahead of me when I suggest national boundaries are not the best hermetic barrier to verse or mode. So who are 'folk'?