The point of bitcoin has never been no fees.
Anyway, if there are no transactions, then Bitcoin is dead.
Satoshi Nakamoto said this years ago too in
What's with this odd generation?.
If Bitcoin blockchain is alive and there is transaction volume, there is consequently transaction fee for Bitcoin miners.
Right. Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating. In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.