I would still argue against favoritism in the fee economics..
The reason this was done is 2 fold.. incentivize adoption to segwit and more importantly Reduce UTXO growth.
I will remain distrustful of Core's leadership and their conflicted interest in forcing the settlement layer architecture.
How will bitcoin scale to the mainstream if it didn't act as a settlement layer for the main chain? It certainly cant get far by continually increasing the block side.
It can't, but it won't ever need to scale if we don't keep transactions free long enough to build a critical mass of users. We're not gonna grow by having goldbugs suddenly decide it's an awesome store of value that you can't spend but only trade for fiat while paying ever increasing fees..
Gold is a store of value because it
could be money. Bitcoin will never be a store of value if it CAN'T be money. We won't ever need to scale if we don't maintain/increase Bitcoin's utility.