1. Lightning is only necessary because the dev team refuses to scale the base layer.
LN development is separated from Bitcoin protocol and Bitcoin Core.
What are your uncensored thoughts on lightning?
LN is preferable only when you regularly make transaction. For example, default LN channel duration is 2 weeks so LN is preferable if you make more than 2 transactions/2 weeks.
To me the only question is, how much pain is the community willing to tolerate before they finally scale?
If you actually mean increase block size when you said "scale", most likely it'll happen after all viable scaling option is exhausted.