I did a calculation recently where I figured it would cost a minimum of six million dollars in order to carry out a viable solo mining operation.
Show me these calculations. Additionally, you don't need a 'viable' operation; you need 1 block.
Do you seriously believe that someone who invests six million dollars into a mining operation would not be able to afford to run their own full node in a datacenter anywhere in the world?
I never said this.
Agreed, which is why I think a hard block size limit is not even necessary, which is why my preferred implementation is Bitcoin Unlimited.
If it truly wasn't necessary, everyone would either jump to BU and/or remove the limit in the current implementation. In other words, it is necessary.