If there's no fees how would the project be funded? Companies would profit and donate money?
The IOTA Foundation was founded in 2016 after 5% of all existing iotas were donated by the early investors. The foundation supports the development and projects. The value of this iota owned by the foundation currently stands at $ 50-60 million. While the boom back in January, it was even close to $300 million.
You mean $ 50-60 million in Tether, which is just a scam token "backed" by some "real" money held in a secret bank. So nobody is able to convert Tether to fiat, because it would expose the name of the bank.
And, sorry, there was no boom in January. It was a mass fraud, thanks to Tether-printing, Bitconnect and its copycats, wash trading, spoofing and other technics.
In short, IOTA does not need any fees and thus no miners because each client that creates a transaction must previously confirm two other transactions via PoW. That's the concept that makes miners obsolete.
Mining was a lame idea from the beginning. It's unsustainable in the long run. But it's the only "fair" mechanism of money printing availble unless you specify some rules. Unfortunately, rules is not what one may expect from cyberpunks.
No fees does't look good also. What is the mechanism to prevent spam and fraud other than fees?
You can transfer value, from a fraction of a cent to millions of dollars with 0 fees.
What's the point of treating the rich and the poor equally, other than to make the rich richer and the poor poorer?