This is why I don't see any problem with the fees. If you can't afford those fees just use fiat banking. Bitcoin is for people that do value their money, financial freedom and privacy.
Your vision of what should be bitcoin, is far from being the one that initially captivated so many people, developers, investors, etc...
In a third world country, it is really important to have a payment system that is not banked. At the beginning bitcoin was very useful and very popular for those reasons. I do not plan to pay my coffee with bitcoin (and I hope I can do it with LN at some point), but every day bitcoin loses more and more utility in my country. And I'm frustrated to see that every day bitcoin becomes a tool for large investors, banks or investment funds, and ordinary people, on the street, are excluded.
And it seems to me, according to my humble opinion and what I have researched, that an increase to 2MB of block size is far from representing a danger or a problem to decentralization (especially when working on the optimization of block size) .
This increase would be a gesture of goodwill towards the community and would avoid all these discussions and hatred.
Fees are high - apart from the spam attack -, because demand for blockspace is higher than the supply (and always will be). 2MB/4MB/1024MB wouldn't change it, there are near infinite demand for using the blockchain's utilities; time will always be an unchangeable limit for competing transactions, no matter the blocksize.
Stop bitching about it, that is what called free market, those who value the utility/time/cost of their transactions will outcompete those who do not, same as with every goods/services with free market valuation.
Also, how are high fees a sign of failure?
Classic socialist person thinking:
"this restaurant is full, it is clearly failing because I can not eat here, RIGHT NOW, for the price i esteem "FAIR" for a table, bruh bruh "
Sorry, you just got outpriced by the market.
It really is a bad analogy and does not seem to understand free market capitalism. On the other hand, his vision condemns the countries of the third world to stay out of this system, which seems to me an erroneous idea if we want bitcoin to be successful.
The free market means, among other things, free competition. Bitcoin competes for the network effect, and so far only outperforms other currencies by the inertia of being the first. If there is another currency that is able to satisfy the demand, adapting its offer and offering a fair price, consumers will prefer to opt for it.
And that's exactly what is happening now (and I'm not talking about BCH).
My concern is far from being considered as socialist, I worry about the competitiveness of bitcoin, and its usefulness.
What is the use of a decentralized bitcoin if nobody uses it because it is too expensive (transaction fees)? We must maintain the balance between decentralization and utility with the tools we have in our hands.
I really hope that LN is a success, but we still do not have it and we do not know when it will not be operational.
