I suppose we can agree to disagree on this point, I think the ability to transact freely, cheaply and directly with the Bitcoin blockchain is more important then the ability to run a full node, or the cost of independent validation.
Sure, we can do that, especially when your opinion is wrong.
You obviously do not know what agree to disagree means, I obviously think your position is invalided and incorrect, not necessarily wrong in the ethical sense, and also not necessarily wrong in an empirical sense either since we are dealing with subjective ideologies.
How much higher the fees will actually be depends on the level of adoption, I personally think that Bitcoin will be obsoleted and outcompeted if we do not increase the blocksize.
You guys seem to have many things wrong with assumptions. e.g.: A lot of people are transacting on the main chain -> fees rise -> fees are too high for some -> some leave the system -> fees lower -> repeat. The system will never self destruct like this, no matter how many times you repeat that. There are various scenarios of how this might play out; we can't know for sure until it does.
I find it hard to fathom why you think that Bitcoin does not need to compete with other cryptocurrencies and alternatives, Bitcoin does not exist inside of a ivory tower, which I think much of your thinking is indicative off. The price to transact does matter and so does the user experience.
I suppose you rather side with caution when faced with an uncertainty? I suppose I feel differently especially with such a revolutionary experiment like Bitcoin. We should not cripple the project out of caution.
Of course, albeit: 1. You can easily kill this system with naivety; 2. Nobody is crippling anything.
I consider not increasing the blocksize the equivalent of crippling Bitcoin. If you think that the will of the economic majority can kill the system with naivety then we have some fundamental disagreements about the merits of the collective wisdom of the crowd. Which I do think Bitcoin is fundamentally beholden towards.
Efficiency is not everything, it might be to an engineers but there is more to life then that. You have not answered my question of why sacrificing efficiency for political and ideological goals can be justified, in the same way that Bitcoin and something like the concept of democracy already does inherently in its design.
Efficiency is what matters in the world today. It can't be justified, especially not when you can do so much more if you combine the first layer with the second.
Again you are not answering my question. I will be more specific. Take Democracy for example, as a political system it is very inefficient, however its advantages are worth the inefficiencies for ethical and ideological reasons. You seem to be ignoring these very important human principles when weighing up paths and visions for Bitcoins future. Bitcoin is more then just a robotic machine, human beings are a part of this machine, with their emotions, fears and even irrationality. I think that you are failing to take this into account, this is the very game theory that the Bitcoin of today relies on for its continued operation.
I presumed you where referring to the Internet Protocol as layer one.
This is what I dislike about people, they talk even when they have no idea what they're talking about. IP is not layer 1, it is part of layer 3.
You should try and embrace talking to people outside of your field of expertise. I might not be an expert in this field however after looking this up more it does seem like layer three is the best analogy for Bitcoin, since it is the network layer, not layer one or two. Since they already exist as the internet within a certain extend. So my argument comparing Bitcoin to the Internet Protocol still holds.
I doubt it would change the behavior of the miners significantly compared to today, even at a higher blocksize limit, miners still determine what transactions to include and not to include. It also does not change the fundamental fact that moving transactions off chain does deprive the miners from potential fees, this is inherently true.
They have no reason not to include transactions with lower fees because there is empty space.
You are now creating a circular argument, which one is it, orphan rates will be significant enough to act as a force for smaller blocks, or there is no reason not to include transactions with lower fees? Which one is it? Both can not be true, you have clearly contradicted yourself here. Furthermore I do not see anything wrong with keeping the fees at the same level at which they have been over the last few years, since the block subsidy is meant to bootstrap adoption during the early phases after all. Since there have been fees before we hit the block limit it also proves that there is a fee market that does exist without a blocksize limit that is near the average transaction volume.
The contradiction in your position has already been pointed out. How can you possibly say that an increase to two megabyte is unsafe while simultaneously arguing that segwit is safe? When both increase the effective blocksize while being radically different in terms of complexity.
Nope. I never said that segwit is safe.
If that is your position on segwit then I suppose you do not support any solution to scaling? I know that this is not true, since you did say you supported segwit in favor of a blocksize increase. So you are saying that you support an unsafe complex change to the network but we should not support a simple change to the network because it is unsafe? Can you see the contradiction in your statements?
If orphan rates did ever become an issue the pools could simply move their node to another datacentre, it is that simple.
So you think that orphan rates are caused by slow datacenters?
I do not, though since the major pools all operate out of datacentre like environments they are more or less on a level playing field, the only point at which orphan rate would become an issue is when it is unequal because of block propagation, simply moving the mining node to a better location would fix this and put the miner on a level playing field again. Chinese mining pools could face this issue because of the great firewall of China, this would only become an issue with much larger blocks then what we have today, certainly not two megabyte blocks.