A handful of large organizations probably could run Bitcoin at these rates but realistically that's about it, and at that point they may as well do away with the blockchain itself and make it a real-time system like VISA. That's why clued in folks like the blockstrream guys are looking around for a solution which will let Bitcoin scale to these levels without abandoning the very desirable aspects of the solution that it has today.
Pretty sure satoshi talked about light clients for the masses. Also pretty sure VISA keeps a ledger. Are you suggesting that "clued in guys" have insider knowledge that storage technology isn't going to continue to grow and get cheaper? Do you also think "clued in guys" are writing solutions that pay people to mine things other than bitcoin are doing so completely philanthropically and not out to make a buck? Is there any real evidence that sidechains aren't just going to be the new altcoin?
Well, the 'clued in guys' who associated themselves under 'blockstream' just happen to be among the most productive and thoughtful of the
Bitcoin developers and maintainers. I've personally paid pretty close attention off-and-on for some time now since I have a fair bit riding on Bitcoin (and have not yet diversified into any alts.) I've seen Maxwell be uniformally out in front when it comes to trying to protect the goals of the Bitcoin project which are important to me (openness, decentralization, etc.) When I was watching the deltas it was pretty clear to me that ~sipa was what we in the biz would call the 'principle architect' of the Bitcoin. Adding bluematt, Back, Frie-whatever, etc into the mix makes this group clearly the tip of the codebase spear in my opinion.
It's a fair bet that some of these old timers have giant hoards of Bitcoin. By your own logic it makes little sense that they have anything but a powerful financial incentive to foster the health of Bitcoin itself. Since I personally believe that sidechains are by far the best hope of doing this (and benefit the world's masses in the process) I am not at all surprised and am very heartened that they have organized to achieve this effort.
As far as I'm concerned Hearn, who absolutely _has_ made some very valuable contributions to Bitcoin, has always been in direct opposition to many of the aspects of Bitcoin that appealed to me. To his credit he has been relatively open about these things (debatable on some of them though.) Discriminating against arbitrary users via mining consolidation, consolidation of blockchain maint to a small number of large entities, Red-listing, mainstream passport use for individual identities, etc. I've developed a sense that Hearn has Andresen's ear in a fairly big way and significantly through the medium of the Bitcoin Foundation which also seems to align with Hearn's direction for Bitcoin. When Gavin went to the Council on Foreign Relations (some of the most wealthy and influential people in the world) and refused to either commit to openness or even debrief on the conversations he may have had, this further damaged whatever credibility he had (to me.)
When Gavin champion an exponential growth rate for Bitcoin the first thing I thought was 'Ya, that figures.'
ETA: Considering the cost of ASIC mining equipment, storage technology would actually have to start shrinking and increasing in cost to the point that individuals couldn't afford computers before it would begin to matter to miners.
Aside from the fact that 'that don't make no kinda sense', nobody has ever really considered storage capacity (indicated by your use of the term 'shrinking') to be a factor in much of anything. At worst one might need to physically deliver media in order to get a node operational, but that's doable. Access to the local data for 'old school' full verification modes of operation is a somewhat different matter, but it's likely to be a solvable problem. Both of these assume some simbalance of reasonable system growth at least. If TPS limits were lifted completely all bets are off, but that's not what Gavin is suggesting here (for the next decade or so at least.)