the FUD is unwarranted even if we keep the 1MB limit ( which we aren't ) all that would really do for the foreseeable future is price out mirco TX's and bring the TX cost at about 10cents, buying over priced coffee is still feasible, and we are still undercut paypals 2% +50cents TX fee massively
Bitcoin is a
decentralized publicly auditable settlement system. That people would pay to use. You can use it for 0 fee but it will take longer, its not designed as a payment processor. Satoshi chose security over performance because of
decentralization.
The time to increase the block size will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days.
Bitcoin is a
decentralized Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, even if it can't run on a Raspberry Pi connected to a slow internet connection. Satoshi talked about what you call the "centralization" of bitcoin, as natural evolution of the consensus layer, and envisioned SPV clients. The time to increase the block size was when bitcoin had established a solid value, the fact that its been delayed so much is hurting bitcoin big time, and you know it.