I'm still holding hope for a better proposal that isn't too complex.
A dynamic proposal that allows the "anti-spam" limit to increase and
decrease may allow us to continue to search for other solutions while we have the backstop in place so we don't hit a crisis may be a good idea.
This is where my conversation with Gavin fell apart. He was not able to acknowledge the concept of a too-high limit. His reasoning was that since the limit was only one-sided (blocks with size above it are prevented) that it couldn't be too high.
You, I and others, can see the fallacy of this in a moment, but he seems willing to ignore it. I have good confidence in his programming. I like the way he codes, it is tight and clean. He is a great software engineer, and he has tested the software so that it works with large blocks.
As a protocol engineer he may be able to improve. He has set himself up as the curator of ideas, and decides which have merit and which do not. He was wise enough to revise this aspect of his proposal for the protocol once already, so he can hear some criticisms and respond.
This is why I hold some hope for him yet and have not given up on him.
When I've heard Gavin speak in public I immediately guess that at some point(s) in the guy's career his engineer's cube was right next to an incompletely insulated meeting room. He caught snippets of the business people's conversations, and picked up some buzz words, but little more. Where some engineers who find ourselves in such distracting situations laugh at the absurdity of much of the nonsense, other's reactions are different for whatever underlying set of reasons. Gavin seems of the latter group to me. And in being hoisted into his present position he seeks to emulate the behaviors and thought processes he imagines on the other side of the wall.
I would say that this is a tough break for Bitcoin, but the story is still in play. When the final chapter is written it may end up the case that the existence, place, and time of Mr. Andresen in Bitcoin's history was key to it's success and/or it's failure.