I disagree: The question is what is Bitcoin the network capable of. Right now the network we have not the one we want is capable of very little. And we can't grow it or even maintain it with fees at their current level and block rewards dropping every 4 years. The Bitcoin community may grow by leaps and bounds over the next 4 years and its price my jump up to meet the level of investment miners have invested but unless we have a stable fee for miner income and reinvestment the network will fall. Transaction volume is not the issue its fees, block size is an issue about fees first then user accessibility second (transaction count) and currency usability is a distant 3rd.
That's exactly what I said: Question is, what people use bitcoin for AND what the network is capable of doing.
Problem is there exist several different oppinions about the second question. You think bitcoin needs higher fees to survive the reward droppings. That's ok, many people think so.
But also many people believe the opposite and think that in the long-run bitcoin can only survive if it processes a lot of transactions with little fees and for that it's growth must not be cutted now by high fees. As long as there is a substantial reward and as long as price rising equals the drop in reward there is no need to let raising fees cut adoption. In some time, when reward becomes insignificant, miners have to feed themselves by fees. This will be ~2025/2030.
Either Bitcoin achieves a status of digital gold that is not usefull for daily transactions, but usefull enough to feed a constand demand for transactions with 5-10 Dollar fee.
Or it will be a combination of digital gold and a daily payment systems that is usefull enough for a constant demand of a mass of transactions with a 0.5-1 cent fee.
Both scenarios can work. You prefer the first, I prefere the second (but would be ok with the first). I think we should avoid to decide things we can't influence. Neiher me or you nor single economic actors nor the core devs are able to decide this. It's only the market.
I do not think higher fees would substantially hinder the growth of the community or its network effect as long as those fees stay between 1 and 5 USD, in the distant future when we have a better internet and a better tor network and a better bitcoin network (with stable fees) then by all means go wild.