The mining pools are pretty much the biggest controller of the fees and they don't want them to get TOOOO high or it would be bad for them too. IMO
They have no say in the fees whatsoever. It's the users who decide what they're going to pay and who they're going to compete against to get ahead. The more the merrier for the miners.
It could be that due to large OTC transactions where that next block confirmation is so important, that people just pay up for it. It's better to pay a dollar or two extra in fees than seeing the value of your transaction go down hundreds of thousands of dollars because you went with a $0.25 fee. There have been a lot of high value transactions recorded on-chain, so it doesn't surprise me that the fees are higher than usual.
Indeed. I guess if BTC is infested with people who are used to laying out to their broker for any legacy transaction, plus twitchiness about missing out, plus coming up against an army of similar people I guess our coffee drinking brethren are proper fucked for good unless LNs become something.