Bitfury's paper here:
http://bitfury.com/content/4-white-papers-research/block-size-1.1.1.pdf"The table contains an estimate of how many full nodes would no longer function without hard-ware upgrades as average block size is increased. These estimates are based on the assumption that many users run full nodes on consumer-grade hardware, whether on personal computers or in the
cloud. Characteristics of node hardware are based on a survey performed by Steam [19]; we assume PC gamers and Bitcoin enthusiasts have a similar amount of resources dedicated to their hardware.
The exception is RAM: we assume that a typical computer supporting a node has no less than 3 GB RAM as a node requires at least 2GB RAM to run with margin[15]. For example,if block size increases to 2 MB, a node would need to dedicate 8 GB RAM to the Bitcoin client, while more than a half of PCs
in the survey have less RAM."
Based on his estimation, raise the block size to 4MB will drop 75% of nodes from the network
The 8 GB RAM module for the computer that runs my Bitcoin Unlimited node has 8 GB of RAM. I paid $67 for this memory module 13 months ago. I note that Amazon is selling the same module today for $35 USD. It is unreasonable to cripple bitcoin to support users running obsolete hardware.
Let's compare the cost for 4MB blocks:
1. You spend several hundred dollars on hardware and make a new node dedicated to bitcoin (many gaming machines do not support 16GB memory, thus you need to upgrade pretty much the whole machine), in hope of maintaining the $0.05 fee for bitcoin transactions (and it requires thousands of other nodes also do the same as you)
2. You use those several hundred dollars to pay the transaction fee (should be enough for at least one hundred transactions even the fee rose 100x to $5 per transaction)
Notice that setting up a full node does not benefit the node operator in anyway, and raise the block size will require thousands of such voluntarily setup nodes to upgrade. So I guess any rational human would refuse the node upgrade and pay the fee instead. I guess even the fee has risen to a prohibitive level, average user would still pay fee instead of setting up full nodes using dedicated hardware
I am running a node because doing so is the only way to see how bitcoin actually works. I am not running it to help the network in any way, nor somehow magically keep the fees low so I will pay less. It could be argued as a consequence of my low upstream bandwidth I am actually "hurting" the network by virtue of downloading more that I upload ("leaching"). I do get the benefit of greater security and privacy from running the node. Also, the same machine is running other servers, and I would probably be running it 24/7 even if I stopped running a bitcoin node. I have some older machines that I could use for servers, but they consume enough electricity running 24/7 that the newer machine has already paid for itself.
Were I to pay exorbitant transaction fees I would be doing nothing to help the growth of bitcoin. It would be a foolish decision, because the value of the bitcoins I hold would certainly go down. Of course, if I were astute, I might pay one large transaction fee and dump all of my bitcoins, shut down my node, and stop wasting my time replying to trolls and sock puppets.