People have discussed sidechains and pruning and other suggestions, but the fact is, they will take time to implement to make sure they actually work. A 20MB blocksize is a far more simple solution that will work right now and until I hear something better, that's the one I'll be supporting.
Ok, but, see, we can go for 2-5-8 MB limit (wihtout exponential growth) before we hit the limit, and use the time gained by shooting the can to invent something better
It's not so urgent that our only choice is to implement exponential size growth
What you are saying now is, let's go exponential, maybe we can sustain it.
This is the worst anti-fork argument, since it means you'd want have to have another hard fork each time you need to increase it. If exponential adoption happens, either we find a way to cope with it, or another coin will. Again, there are only two outcomes. Increase the limit, or jump ship when Bitcoin can't cope and grinds to a halt.
Take some time, consider what you are suggesting.
If you only do what is easy, rather than what is right, you will always be wrong.
Secondly, all of your premises here are incorrect. There is no grinding to a halt. The worse case scenario of not resolving this in a strategic way, or not forking for a larger max block size is that Bitcoin will continue to do what it already does better than anything else. It does not "grind to a halt". If your transaction is urgent, you pay a fee.
Important things are worth doing right. Even if they are hard.
Thirdly... So what if there are more hard forks later? The current proposal from Gavin also guarantees that there will be more hard forks. The proposal is a guess at what might be needed, it does not measure the block chain in any way to determine how to set the right block size. It is a good guess, but it is just a guess, same as the 1MB limit was. We don't
finish with hard forks by going with the current proposal either. So none of your argument here makes any sense at all.
You want us to be afraid of some other crypto currency taking over, and that is why we need to fork? Sell your fear elsewhere.
The max block size is only the upper limit of what miners can set for their blocks. The miners set the limits in practice. Most miners have their limits set well below 1MB.