Again: The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".
Basically you can't reply to the simple question of "who is going to run a node for these financial institutions?". Gotcha.
And you keep talking about keeping the blockchain decentralized? What a joke you are.
Financial institutions may run their own nodes, hire a specialist, or use SPV. The point, for the sake of the network remaining diverse/diffuse/defensible/resilient, is to maintain the option of "really" (IE trustlessly) using Bitcoin for anyone with a $300 laptop and 1Mb upstream.
Who cares if they use laptops or big servers?The broader point is that Bitcoin grants anyone with such a laptop and pipe the (revolutionary) option of being their own (disruptive) financial institution.
That no one can't really use anyway because it is either A. Too costly or B. Transactions get never confirmed. Absent a crackdown or other type of crisis, most people will simply "benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain."
But if there were a crackdown or other crisis, we must ensure that ~everyone is economically and technologically able to "write into the holy ledger." Irrelevant to the question.Competitive fees have never failed to get their transactions confirmed. If they did fail, then Bitcoin isn't working the way it's supposed to. But that's never happened.
This will happen if the block size is not increased and there is increased adoption, since not all of the transactions can be confirmed and there will be no way to tell how much of a transaction fee you would even need to get your transaction confirmed, which would in effect make transacting on the Bitcoin blockchain very unreliable. The blocks where never supposed to fill up that is why when they do fill up Bitcoin is not working the way it is supposed to. To quote Satoshi Nakamoto:"The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.""The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets."
Servers cost more than laptops. Requiring an expensive server/pipe to operate a full contributing node would violate Bitcoin's core principle of giving ~everyone the option to act as their own financial institution, and damage the network's diversity/diffuseness/defensibility/resiliency.
Again it is actually the other way around, not increasing the block size can be considered as breaking the social contract since the origonal promise and vission was that the block size should be increased.
BTC fees are still orders of magnitude lower than trivial, especially given the exceedingly valuable magical/revolutionary technology those sub-trivial fees grant access to. As fees rise, they simply exclude marginal cases like gambling/spam/tips/coffee/paywalls.
I do agree with you on this in principle however I do not think that time is now, since the block reward is still high and adoption is still relatively low. Furthermore we need higher transaction volume in order to pay the miners far into the future as well. This is a case where higher volume at low cost would be better then low volume at high cost. Since it would be better to keep the network as inclusive and inexpensive as possible from the users perspective since it is more important to increase adoption first, this would help Bitcoins survival into the future. I do think however that there should be a block size limit and a fee market should develop in the future, since the block reward is still high and adoption is still relatively low. Furthermore we need higher transaction volume in order to pay the miners far into the future as well. I do not think that confining Bitcoin to the role of a clearing house, would neccesarelly provide enough incentive for mining far into the future if we want Bitcoin to be the largest and therefore the most secure proof of work blockchain.
That's a good thing. And there's plenty of room for them off-chain or on alt/side chains.
It would be better if everyone could use the Bitcoin blockchain directly and have the same level of transparency and security as the clearing houses.
Bitcon's survivability is never "irrelevant to the question." Bitcon's survivability is central to the answer of every question
Bitcoins survivability at this point is increased the most by increasing adoption not arbitarily restricting it.
These quotes that you have posted are good but I could easily argue that each and everyone one of these quotes actually supports my argument, they are mostly ambiguous to this discussion and do not support your arguments whatsoever.