I think it is pretty much impossible to have consensus with the ones believing 1MB is perfect and wait for the fee market to develop. Democracy solves this problem by force to make minority content, but in trully free enviroment where you have no power to force minority to accept majority consensus, the best way is ignore the minority and go its way. The idea of multiple scaling client interpretations + the unchanged 1MB core and let people+business+miner choose what wins should be done after no wide consensus is found soon how to face the scaling problem imo.
You don't let people without a technical background decide on their own(!) where we are headed. If we let that happen, then Bitcoin is going to have a short future. The developers (or other 'experts') should clearly present the risks and benefits of each implementation and then the majority should decide. Besides, only a few people want 1MB to stay, so you can stop using this as an arguement. Most want a increase in one way or another (be it 2,4,8 Mb, dynamic/ other). It's just too easy to manipulate the majority here (pretty much everywhere) because of the lack of technical knowledge.
Again, there is no problem at the moment. My transaction last night confirmed in 4 minutes.