i don't remember getting the memo about bitcoin is supposed to be cheap, and it certainly has never been the main reason for using it.
Uh, here is a memo from Satoshi Nakamoto in
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System in the intro problem statement describing how (in traditional internet payment) mediation increases transactions costs and limits the practicality of small transactions.
Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as
trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for
most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot
avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions
maybe people have forgotten what decentralization means! what it really means when you are in full control over your money without needing a fucking bank to tell you what to do with it, to block your money, take whatever they want from you, government put their hands in your pocket, ...
Decentralization specifically means that there is no central authority that controls the money or rules a around it -- for transactions nodes instead of a central authority to handle transactions with an incentive of fees. But considering that Satoshi was talking about "mediation increasing transaction costs" and "cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions" on the internet, I am sure he did not intend the incentive of these small transactions in bitcoin to be larger than that of traditional internet payment mechanisms.
This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides
a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.
The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending
resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.
The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is
less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of
the block containing the transaction.
Bitcoin was not intended as a settlement system for only large payments, it was designed as a
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System for even very small payments. Problem is centralization has occurred with the Chinese miners and they will fight any changes that may cut down the fees
