Jeweller, thank you for your great questions, Ill endeavour to answer them.
First I wish to point out that that I believe that a bitcoin-like protocol that has no block-size limit. Where the miners choose the best block based upon two factors: block size and difficulty, would be still economically secure. I suggest miners would orphan blocks that are too-large (thus too-expensive to maintain). (The network would find some sort of equilibrium).
If I was to pull out the continuous issue here:
Max_Block_Size is both a network and economic issue.Changing the max block size has real economic consequences that can be split into two areas: Fees and Uses.
Fees:While I dont think that the network needs a low Max_Block_Size to remain secure, that shouldnt be up to my own analysis. People may have invested into Bitcoin because they believe the 1MB limit to be the value required to maintain a secure network.
We don't know if Bitcoin had a different limit if they would have invested in the first place OR NOT.
Uses:In 10-years, a modern smartphone/computer will be able to run the
full processing node if the Max_Block_Size remains 1MB. This is a clear economic benefit for Bitcoin: Decentralized Bitcoin verification. In fact in a few years, virtually every computer will be able to process the entire blockchain without issue thus making Bitcoin extremely unique in the realm of payments.
We don't know if Bitcoin had a different limit if they would have invested in the first place OR NOT.
So I believe that the Max_Block_Size is clearly a moral issue, more than a practical issue. Just like the Maximum Bitcoins, or Generation Rates.- refuse the change and go with a small-block client
- grudgingly accept it and upgrade to a big-block client
- give up on bitcoin all together?
Keep on using the smaller chain. Although I could double spend my coins in the larger chain for my own benefit.
Saying you reject it on "moral" terms though makes me think you might not be willing to make that kind of pragmatic compromise.
Yes.
Perhaps a better question then I'd like to ask people here is: The year is 2015. Every block is a megabyte. Someone wrote a new big-block client fork, and people are switching. What will you do?
If it is better for my purposes than Bitcoin I would move over. However I believe that the network effect will be that bitcoin is always my first store of value.