10. Users at the margins of transaction profitability with respect to fees are pushed off the network.
11. Many people, most non-technical, clamor for the block size limit to be lifted.
12. Fees reach an equilibrium where they remain stable.
13. Spurred by the profitability of Bitcoin transactions, alternate chains appear to capture the users that Bitcoin lost.
14. Pleased with their profitability, miners refuse to accept any hard fork to block size.
All this might have to happen in a frantic week!
I think it is terribly sanguine to just assume that alternate chains can appear quickly and integrate seamlessly alongside the main blockchain. This is extremely speculative. We need some of these alt-chains to be up and running right now, taking volume, and proving themselves. Is coinbase an "alt-chain" in your example?
markm. You seem to advocate waiting until the last minute before executing the hard-fork. Yes, more information will be available to set the increased value/formula, but surely in opensource the best hard-fork is one that is executed as early as possible so that people can upgrade at their convenience.
The lily pads are increasing 10-fold per year (500 transactions per day in Jan 2011, 5000 per day in Jan 2012, 50000 per day in Jan 2013. Jan 2014 will require 1.8Mb blocks if that continues. Yes SD could be throttled or killed, yet I think it is doing bitcoin a favor, by highlighting this issue "within the community". It would be different if it was Mega or Wordpress racking up the volume.