it has been shown that once blocklimit would be reached fees would of course rise and a free market effect for txs would take hold (if you want fast transaction, pay higher fees). The first effect of this would be to drive a lot of the spamming microtransactions like satoshi dice for 50cents worth a bet and things like that off the chain. That's probably already 20% or 30% of the traffic. So the propaganda of 'the chain comes to a halt' is fearmongering and only serves the purpose of bullying everyone into accepting the gavinfork without a second thought.