Actually transaction fees during most of 2017 were at their record high and definitely a lot higher than today.
I do not know about this because I wasn't even using bitcoin at the time, but I have checked the price history of bitcoin before, 2017 was very bullish all through which is a reflection of what you are commenting to be true because the fee will be high when the mempool is very congested while bull market is a reflection of mempool congestion.
Bitcoin transaction fees aren't a fixed amount in satoshi, they are defined based on size using units such as satoshi/(v)byte.
Exactly, definitely the OP is commenting basically about custodial exchanges like Binance that have very high withdrawal fee in which is a way custodial exchanges are making profit from people because bitcoin fee is not high to such entent and depending on sat/vbyte. The mempool is not even congested recently while even the 0.00005 the OP mentioned will still get transaction confirmed depending on the mempool while the sat/vbyte is still what to be considered to determine the fee.
This is how I look at it. Morality has nothing to do with it. It's business and it's about generating as much profit as possible. The fees are high, but people still use them.
That is true, it is business, but many people always make use of exchange fee to think that Bitcoin fee is actually high, which means the fee is not too high to what they are thinking about bitcoin fee, only few people that make use of noncustododial wallet and mempool estimation that are taking advantage of bitcoin fee which is not as high as many exchange users thought.
Few exchanges still have higher fee than binance while many if not most exchanges charges just like Binance charges, that is why Binance will not have to worry about anything.