the fees are actually over $13 per transaction when you include the block reward! This averages out to only 0.5% of the total transaction volume which is pretty cheap for proven security.
small transactions are somewhat subsidizing larger ones because of the tx fees.. which i think is obviously terrible for the currency.
The fees seemingly need to be pegged to a USD amount, or at least the protocol should be aware of the value of USD, respective bitcoin. I say this not to extol the supremacy of the dollar, but to peg the fees to a reasonable marker. USD is ubiquitous and already somewhat of a global standard. I love bitcoin going to the moon, but it sucks that the fees had to come along too
