It is so simple. The transaction fees are high because BTC users are ready to pay them. It's actually only them, who are responsible for high fees. As a matter of fact voluntary fees can kill the whole BTC, because they are driven by greed which can be endless (because of people's nature). This is a real issue in BTC protocol that must be resolved, sooner the better.

I do understand their purpose (reward for miners in the future, instead of newly mined BTCs), but the fees regulation is really needed and should be set to constant - e.g. 1 satoshi per 100KB. No matter how big the transaction is, all transactions would be with the same priority, with no possibility for any of them to be "forgotten" in the space.