The base layer has to stay VERY comfortably within Moore's law.
If one is to use Moore's law as the metric, computing power has increased by a factor of 64 in the time of Bitcoin's existence.
Lessee.... what's 1MB times 64? Humm....
Nope. Actual use of computers over that time says nope. It's not a fucking universal principle, it was a trend until it wasn't, and now it isn't.
Well, if you were to state that 'Moore's law' is misnamed, and is really something akin to 'Moore's assertion' or 'Moore's rule-of-thumb', I'd agree.
However, the situation cAPSLOCK brings up is valid. Whatever the rate, computing power becomes ever-so-more affordable as time goes on. Typical home computers can now handle 100 tx/s even before fixing the broken Core threading model (500 tx/s has been demonstrated with a mockup). If you can't pony up for a typical home computer, I'm happy to say bye-bye to your node.