I read an interesting theory that Bitcoin was started by the US treasury, and that it was an experiment to help them design a new world currency. They saved the output from the first year's mining to help them control prices later down the line. It's starting to look as if Bitcoins are being removed from the market, and this is a good omen for long term price trends. It will mke it unusable as a payment method though, except for large transactions of course.
This would explain the block size of 1 MB then. By reading the original paper and Satoshi's old posts, I am still not sure why the block was not made bigger from the beginning, unless what you say is true. Add to that: the cost in electricity needed, quite surprising that Satoshi did not seem to be bothered by that (or maybe he was, hence again the block size of 1 MB). Plausible theory which would also explain why he apparently jumped ship seven years ago.