Note that there is a hidden "fee" called "inflation" that has allowed transaction fees to remain small during the bootstrapping phase of bitcoin.
Every year (acutally every 10 minutes or so) that "fee" is slowly whittled away.
At the moment, inflation is used to pay miners a block subsidy of 25 BTC for every block. That's more than 1.3 million bitcoins in a year. With the current volume of bitcoins in existence at approximately 13 million, that means that inflation right now is eating away at the value of your bitcoins at an annualized rate of 10% and handing that value over to the miners to maintain the system.
As long as demand keeps up with (or surpasses) this inflation, it remains hidden. Essentially the value of your bitcoins is growing at an annualized rate right now that is 10% less than it would be if the miners weren't being paid with inflation.
Eventually the block subsidy will dwindle, and the miners will need to be compensated for securing the network. This can either come from increased transaction volume, or increased fees per transaction. My guess it that it might come from a little bit of both.
Wow! That just went way over my head. I guess its time to get to bed! Will come back and read this post tomorrow as it seems to be interesting. My parting shot: No matter how high the transaction fee rises, i could never imagine the fee rising to the same level as FIAT. The $1000 saving was a real shocker to me and i cant wait to see how much more people can save on transaction costs, thereby bringing the cost of services and goods down.