There still isn't a mandatory fee.  Repeating that there is doesn't make it true.

As far as escaping fees or adding merchants, etc. I have to confess, I'm a capitalist and not a marxist.  I'm not doing this for the Proletariat Masses or for the betterment of society, I'm doing it because I want my computer to make me money while I'm at another job making more money, so I can afford to buy a bigger, newer TV that I don't need.  Fees allow the transactions to process faster, because more people want to make BTC processing transactions as mining winds down.  You can't go to starbucks, pay with bitcoins, and tell the barista "Ok, those BTC should clear in 1-4 hours once there are 120 free confirmations".

As mining produces less coins, and at higher difficulty, processing transactions is where the architecture is headed to make more money.

If you want to buy a server, and let the whole world use all your servers for free to instantly get 1 of the 120 confirmations needed, so be it.  Just convince 119 of your friends to buy servers, and pay for internet, electricity, and hardware out of their own pockets, and process these transactions for the whole Revolution of the Proletariat Masses for free.

I'd say you could get a decent server for about $5k with software, and probably $300 a month for colocation on a fast backbone.

So for you and your friends, about $600k for the hardware and software, about another $300k for someone to set them up, and then $300 a month times 120 is $36,000.  For just under a million you could build an entire network to process free transactions, and for only $36,000 a month plus maintenance and IT staff, you could keep the whole thing running.

I think you're on to something here, and I really appreciate you volunteering all of this.  I'd be willing to help you with the equipment - I can get you servers for 10% above cost, and $100 an hour for remote labor to set it up.

Or, you could pay the fucking 20 cents.