Let's carefully analyze how the situation has changed during the past 6-7 months time. At the beginning of this year, I remember paying around BTC0.0001 as the tx fee for most of my transactions. Back then, the exchange rates were around $1,000 per coin. And the fee was equivalent to $0.10. And after 6 months, I was paying somewhere between BTC0.0015 and BTC0.0020 as the tx fee. Considering the increase in the exchange rates, this represents a 90 times increase in the tx fee (from $0.10 to $9.00).
I agree with the OP. We need to unite against this fleecing by the miners. They've become too greedy.
A big part of the problem is that users are fleecing themselves, effectively, by paying more than necessary. I've recently had transactions confirmed which paid only a couple satoshis per byte. Congestion is actually down, and Segwit transactions are picking up, lowering fees across the board.
The other thing is that we can't look at fees in terms of fiat value. Fiat is irrelevant to the protocol; fees are built into the protocol in terms of BTC. If the market price of BTC will continue to rise in the future, you can expect fees to rise as well. I think we all better get used to that idea now. Batch payments efficiently, migrate to Segwit, and look forward to the Lightning Network and sidechains.
