Your analysis resonates with some of the major pain points plaguing the Ethereum ecosystem. Indeed, gas inefficiency is becoming the Achilles heel of many ERC-20 tokens and dApps, undermining the scalability of the Ethereum network. This problem, in essence, results from unoptimized code in smart contracts, often due to the developers’ neglect or sometimes, lack of expertise.
In terms of increasing transaction capacity, although it seems like an evident solution, the trade-offs could entail potential security vulnerabilities and centralization, thereby straying from Ethereum's decentralization ethos. Layer 2 solutions, while promising on the surface, are not the magic pill we all hope for. They do indeed necessitate interactions with the base layer, and hence consume gas.
Migration to other blockchains often entails compromising on aspects integral to blockchain's value proposition such as decentralization, security, and reliability. It's a bit like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The pursuit for a silver bullet solution must continue, but we should brace ourselves for a world where high gas fees might be the inconvenient reality.
It seems that ETH developers have decided to follow centralization just to make the Blockchain more "efficient". Their intentions to reduce the number of validators on the network says it all. They want to reduce the minimum amount of 32 ETH to 2048 ETH for staking. While less validators will result in higher performance, ETH will become more centralized as only exchanges and the wealthy will be able to acquire the 2048 ETH required for staking and supporting the network. Most people don't care about this, as long as fees are reduced in the long run. This will bring negative repercussions to ETH, because it will be easier for the government to "shut it down" at will.
We'd have to decide whenever we want decentralization at the cost of higher fees and slower TX confirmation times, or all the other way around. I'd choose decentralization even if I have to pay high gas fees per transaction. If ETH keeps this up, I believe Ethereum Classic (ETC) will "eat up its cake". That's assuming it stays PoW forever. No one can predict the future, so let's hope for the best. Just my opinion