. In fact by not clearing transactions in blocks and causing the memory pool to increase beyond what it should, the 1MB limit is probably more stressful on nodes than simply letting larger blocks get processed....
This is a very valid point not many have talked about yet. I'd like to see what the 'nodemongers' have to say about this?
If you are referring to the set of transactions kept around waiting to put them in a block, full nodes could set a hard memory limit and flush those with the lowest transaction fee per kb forcing them to be resent to the network periodically.