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There is a big difference between on and off chain transactions don't confuse the two.
And cypher's position has dealt with just 2 issues, you've avoided both of them.
1. A change to the protocol that alters the incentive structure that makes Bitcoin a hard money.
2. Is it ethical for a for profit company to motivate and fund those changes.
You've effectively spent 200 pages not 50, trying to discredit those two facts by denying them,
1) The incentive structure has nearly zero to do with the 'hardness' of the money. But if you want to talk incentive structure, talk about block size since it is completely related to transaction fees. That is one of the reasons why I consider the block size to be a very significant system level change which influences both the defensive capability of the system and it's economics. Much bigger than a soft-fork script extension which nobody is forced to use an which does not alter the basic operating principles of Bitcoin almost at all.
2) Seems at least as ethical as the Bitcoin Foundation charging $100,000 for a seat at the big-boy's table and paying one of the principle developers. Or BitPay paying another. As long as there is transparency I've got nothing against these kinds of things. TBF leaves a lot to be desired vis-a-vis transparency and the status as a trade group makes this lack of transparency much more problematic to me.
As far as I'm concerned brg444 has been quite clear in most of his arguments (note that the above are my own...I'm not trying to re-iterate his.) Indeed, his grasp of Bitcoin is suspiciously good for a newbie which is the only argument I can see for cypherdoc's meltdown into raving paranoia.
I think im as skeptical as you when it comes to trusting anyone with the ability to make changes to the Bitcoin protocol, and I have just as much disdain for the Bitcoin Foundation. It wouldn't bother me if TX fees were adjusted manually for the next 2 to 5 years while people discuss options.
As for block size and TX fees, the fee is only used to incentivize security, miners are not (but for a miner limitation in hard drive write speeds) impeded by block size, just nodes.
If Bitcoin scales big I'm of the opinion that a computer enthusiasts with 10 to 100 BTC would be happy and financially incentivized to maintain a node in a similar way many like to manage there own portfolios today.
There is a cost to run the network and it is donated by the nods, the place I see opportunity for innovation is here. I've not seen one proposal to address this in an effective way and SC do it in an ineffective way by using the security incentive to subsidies the maintenance cost.