Why is the payment channel idea not good enough for most transactions that do not require censorship resistance?
There's nothing wrong with it
if that is what the free market decides.
If forcing transactions into payment channels requires a production quota on block space, then I think there
is something wrong with it.

Moreover, I don't think it would even be possible to enforce the quota, since the pressure indicated by the brown shaded region in the lower chart would provide impetus to fork the protocol (larger block sizes) to satisfy the demand unmet due to the quota.
Source:
http://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-12#post-392