Economic considerations should also be given for developing countries where bandwidth costs are high, as are imported technological goods like hard disks, ram and high end CPUs/mobos. The western world doesn't really understand the problem.
Serious question as a 'western world citizen'. How do developing countries use the Internet nowadays? Do they have big hubs and data centers like in the west? Or do they just make use of the Internet as it is hosted in the more developed countries?
Without taking a position in the debate, I can't judge it well enough, it seems like sending and receiving a few kilobytes is plenty for making a transaction.
Gimme a break. My node cost me $118 bucks.