That sounds a little... absolutist?

It's not that the base layer "cannot" scale.  It's that it has to be scaled intelligently because there are consequences to getting it wrong.  I would also argue quite a few users of the word don't correctly comprehend the meaning of 'scaling' to begin with, anyway. 

'Linear growth' is not the same as 'scaling'.  BCH is doing linear growth.  That's not an improvement of technology, it's just using more resources in the same inefficient way.  Real scaling comes advancing technology.