One problem we face is it seems blockchains are inherently more expensive (bandwidth, latency, convergence time) at the limit that server clusters like Voting Pools for OpenTransactions and other related ideas. That might encourage people to not take up full bitcoin features if those systems turn out not to be able to match the features quite due to less decentralisation.
Blockchains are inherently more expensive in terms of resource consumption than other solutions. On the other hand, they offer additional features which the less expensive options can't provide.
We can't know what the optimal allocation between blockchain vs off-chain transactions - the only way to discover the optimal allocation is to allow blockchain transactions to find their true market price and compete fairly with off-chain transactions.
That price can not be discovered as long as there's a production quota tilting the scale.
sounds good to me. I think there is sort of assumed to be some price discovery via user preference and miner policy but as the blocks havent filled up so far we've never seen much supply shortage other than at 0 fees.
The most important area where price discovery is lacking is bandwidth in the P2P network.
Right now it's designed like every other P2P network along the principle of, "Let's give everything away for free, then craft a set of rules of ever-increasing complexity that force consumption patterns into the shape we desire".
It would be a great sign of progress if we could all agree that's never been a viable long term solution to network design and that maybe it's time to consider "everybody pays for what they use" instead.