Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[iCEBREAKER]

I want the distribution of wealth in crypto to look like the pie chart of mining pool hashrates.

That would require Bitcoin losing significant market share to altcoins. I don't want that to happen. Most Bitcoin users don't want that to happen. You're an advocate of altcoins, so your interests diverge from that the majority of the members of this community. I suspect that is why you are advocating against a hard fork and for a permanent 1 MB restriction that would hamper Bitcoin's adoption.

you fail to realize: this hardfork, secret island meetings, gavins behaviour, the low priority consensus actually seems to have, the inaccessibility that Gavincoin will have, the behaviour of the pro-forkers aswell as many, many other things is exactly what drives people out of bitcoin and into altcoins.
(not that i would think it's a bad thing, i think it's healthy)


Alts gaining marketshare is healthy for all of the ecosystem, it improves decentralisation and developement.

Bitcoin bagholders who fear this are people who miss out on the opportunity to invest in altchains and make profits there.  

its not about missing opportunitys to invest in shitcoins
more like a total dislike of them

its more like ALT coin bag holders trying to pimp their own coin because btc is closer to mainstream
than any ALT coin will ever be and alts are dying off every day and nobody even pays attention to it while btc gains more and more milllions in investments

Exactly. We have XMR advocate kazuki49 harshly insulting Bitcoiners who say they want Bitcoin to maintain its market dominance against altcoins.

We have iCEBREAKER saying a permanent 1 MB restriction is okay because altcoins can just take market share from Bitcoin when the Bitcoin blockchain fills up to the limit.

We have 'Pecunia non olet' saying the hard fork would be bad, and then telling Bitcoiners they should be investing in altcoins.

That they have to come into the Bitcointalk forum to try to discourage the community from making the right decision, to give their altcoins a chance, shows how low they're sinking.

We crypto advocates are very small in number and most of us (including Satoshi, a supporter of Namecoin) understand the values of innovation, diversity, competition, and specialization.

I've already said Bitcoin should be the backbone of the rest.  I support all crypto, especially Bitcoin, so I don't want to see it harmed by hard forks where an economic majority is in question.

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale. Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.
— Satoshi Nakamoto

amincd's paranoia is hilarious.  Please, show me where infamous BTC maximalist Mircea Popescu has ever been anything but 100% anti-altcoin.

Hint - it's not here:  http://trilema.com/2014/the-woes-of-altcoin-or-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-cryptocurrencies/

Now take your unkind assumptions about my motivations and GFY!

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[amincd]

I don't want Bitcoin to lose market share to altcoins. You do:

There are at least three other blockchains available which are well suited to handle the small (Cryptonite), medium (Litecoin), and private (Monero) transactions.

I want the distribution of wealth in crypto to look like the pie chart of mining pool hashrates.

Given you don't share the interests of the majority of the Bitcoin community, in seeing Bitcoin remain the dominant cryptocurrency, people should be wary of your opinion that the 1 MB restriction should be made permanent.

And as I mentioned, your rationale for opposing lifting the 1 MB block size limit, goes against everything Bitcoin has stood for from the beginning.

You claim what you're hoping for is that Bitcoin becomes  "super gold" transfer system, that only large financial institutions can afford to directly access. What the Bitcoin white paper promised is:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

An ultra expensive "super gold" transfer system that only large financial institutions can afford to directly access on behalf of their end users is exactly the opposite of a peer-to-peer electronic cash.

[iCEBREAKER]

It seems like there a very high proportion of those against this sensible protocol adjustment are advocates of altcoins.

Icebreaker wants a permanent 1 MB block size limit and for Bitcoin to lose 60% of its market share to altcoins.

The best course of action for Bitcoin (not altcoins), is for this artificial 1 MB restriction to be lifted, as Satoshi intended, and the current lead developer, Gavin Andresen, intends.

I've given numerous reasons why larger blocks are necessary for Bitcoin's success, as have others. You're more interested in your personal attacks to deflect the issue, because you're not here to honestly debate the issue. You're here to advocate for your altcoin.

Is Mircea Popescu also against the 20MB hard fork because he's here to advocate for his altcoin?

No, he's 100% anti-altcoin.  Is davout an altcoin advocate too?  He must be, because he opposes the 20MB hard fork!  Right?

See how stupid you look when you try to infer motivations rather than discuss objective facts?

Now tell us again why you favor Nash Equilibrium for pools, but not for distribution of value accross blockchains.

Oh wait, you can't!  

I've repeatedly said I want Bitcoin to be the dominant crypto.  I used metaphors like 'gold standard' and 'backbone.'

But you still think I somehow don't "share the interests of the majority of the Bitcoin community."

That's BS; like you I've been here since mid 2011.

What part of

"The overall market for crypto currencies should grow so fast that Bitcoin's relative position among the sector is moot, except to you Maximalist partisan religious types."

is so hard to understand?

Ah I see, you're just wallowing in the usual Maximalist partisan religious type nonsense.

Carry on!

[amincd]

Is Mircea Popescu also against the 20MB hard fork because he's here to advocate for his altcoin?

No, he's 100% anti-altcoin.  Is davout an altcoin advocate too?  He must be, because he opposes the 20MB hard fork!  Right?

Oh don't get me wrong, there are pure Bitcoin advocates who support the 1 MB block size limit, but they're greatly outnumbered by Bitcoiners who want the limit raised, like Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin Andresen, DeathAndTaxes, and apparently the majority of this forum (if the poll was done honestly).

I noted that among anti-fork advocates, a high proportion seem to be advocates of altcoins. That doesn't mean all of them are.

And finally, I don't want, and I suspect the majority of this community don't want, Bitcoin to lose 60% of its market share, so that the cryptocurrency market cap pie chart looks like the mining pool hashrate pie chart:

I want the distribution of wealth in crypto to look like the pie chart of mining pool hashrates.

And I don't want Bitcoin to become a  "super gold" transfer system, that only large financial institutions can afford to directly access.

I suspect most people share my hope that Bitcoin becomes what the white paper promised:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

[iCEBREAKER]

Is Mircea Popescu also against the 20MB hard fork because he's here to advocate for his altcoin?

No, he's 100% anti-altcoin.  Is davout an altcoin advocate too?  He must be, because he opposes the 20MB hard fork!  Right?

Oh don't get me wrong, there are pure Bitcoin advocates who support the 1 MB block size limit, but they're greatly outnumbered by Bitcoiners who want the limit raised, like Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin Andresen, DeathAndTaxes, and apparently the majority of this forum (if the poll was done honestly).

I noted that among anti-fork advocates, a high proportion seem to be advocates of altcoins. That doesn't mean all of them are.

Then why note it?  If you had confidence in your core arguments, you wouldn't need to cast aspersions and muddy the thread with digressions.

Perhaps you could be bothered to address the content of our pro-altcoin critiques, rather than dismiss them with snotty hand-waving?

It's unfair to characterize me as "anti-fork."  As already explained:

I'll support a 20MB block fork in the future, if

-we wait to see how the market/infrastructure/ecosystem react/adapt to scarcity in (1MB) blocks
-then raise the limit to 2, 5, or 10 if widespead support exists
-then run out of room at 2/5/10 and widespead support exists for another increase
-and implement pruning
-and ensure TOR users are not cut off

In any case, we need a majority, not just a consensus, to approve and implement such hard forks.

[RoadStress]

I want the distribution of wealth in crypto to look like the pie chart of mining pool hashrates.

Bitcoin should be the largest, followed by many smaller ones, not a top-heavy 85%.
If 1MB starts creating problems, let the market and ecosystem deal with them for a while and see what they come up with.

Then, armed with empirical data, we can decide with higher consensus whether to change it, and by how much.

Again someone that is against raising the block size limit who wants to impose his views. So you want a distribution on wealth like a pie chart, but you also want the market and the ecosystem to deal with the problems. It can't be both ways. It's either your way or the market's way.

<MP eating a lot of shit in his post>

Go away MP!

I am an advocate of crypto in general, including Bitcoin and altcoins.

LIES! The only thing that you advocate for is failed business like HashFast. Most of your post are praising and defending a failed (scammer in my view) company that managed to eat ~50M$ while leaving most of its customers with nothing.

I know that you will say otherwise, but please prove it that you are an advocate of crypto in general. Otherwise you just eat shit just like Mircea Popescu and his sock puppets accounts.

Btw its pretty clear that Gavin will go ahead, there is no point in discussing this other than for some of us to come back in the future and tell I told you so.

This should be good news for everyone. I think this will be the first time where we will see how a decentralized consensus network works at stress times. Gavin may go ahead, but the network will decide. It's not called Beta for nothing! Grow up and take it like a man instead of crying like a baby. And this is for all that are against the fork. You don't like the new fork then stay on your old fork. The network will decide! Not you, not me and neither Gavin.

Icebreaker wants a permanent 1 MB block size limit and for Bitcoin to lose 60% of its market share to altcoins.

Now you understand why they can't grasp the reasons for a higher block limit? They simply can't understand that a network that has a higher net-worth is much more valuable to have and will pay higher fees than a network with a lower net-worth.

What I find pretty amusing is that all the people that are against the fork want to limit something or someone with their ideas, while Gavin's idea only opens a door.

[amincd]

Icebreaker wants a permanent 1 MB block size limit and for Bitcoin to lose 60% of its market share to altcoins.

Now you understand why they can't grasp the reasons for a higher block limit? They simply can't understand that a network that has a higher net-worth is much more valuable to have and will pay higher fees than a network with a lower net-worth.

What I find pretty amusing is that all the people that are against the fork want to limit something or someone with their ideas, while Gavin's idea only opens a door.

Not only that, they are being quite disingenuous in how they go about it.

Icebreaker now claims that he doesn't want a permanent 1 MB block size limit, even though he made a post titled:

"Permanently changing the 1MB transaction supply is a great idea ..."

as a play on the title of DeathAndTaxes' post, which simply argued that the 1 MB block size shouldn't be made permanent. His post ridiculed DeathAndTaxes' position, and strongly implied that he favored a permanent 1 MB restriction.

And he refuses to address how far his vision of a super expensive "super gold" transfer system, that only large financial institutions can afford to use, strays from the original Bitcoin white paper of a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

[RoadStress]

Pure gold from someone who is an advocate of crypto. You are doing one terrible job.

I'll support a 20MB block fork in the future, if

-we wait to see how the market/infrastructure/ecosystem react/adapt to scarcity in (1MB) blocks

If we agree that sometimes in the future we will raise the limit then why not do it now?

-then raise the limit to 2, 5, or 10 if widespead support exists

Widespread support already exists. You only choose to ignore it.

-then run out of room at 2/5/10 and widespead support exists for another increase

If we agree that sometimes in the future we will raise the limit to 10MB then why not do it now?

-and implement pruning

It is not mandatory to implement it right away when raising the block limit because if we didn't needed it 1 day before then we don't need it today.

-and ensure TOR users are not cut off

So now it is mandatory that Bitcoin should be accessed through TOR? Why? Because you want it so?

Advocate failure!

[tvbcof]

Initially, at least, I'll only use a sidechain which can recognize an attack and freeze peg operations until the attacker gets tired of wasting his effort and goes away.  If it even takes that to protect the sub-system.  In the mean time I'll expect many designs to be able to operate just fine but just cannot inflate or deflate while an attack is underway.

In my conception of the world one of the marvelous things about sidechains is that they are much more free to adapt to various kinds of threats (and service more types of needs.)  Indeed, that is one of the ways that sidechains support Bitcoin...by creating an endless whack-a-mole for entities trying to attack crypto-currencies more generally.   only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

You sure are putting a lot of faith in side chains.

This is in no small part due to the people who are behind them.  Also, as I've said, I've been thinking about them for some time and the advantage/dis-advantage ratio is huge as I see it.  Lastly, the theory is simple which usually means that it is practical.

The only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

Greed is the only thing needed for that. Engineers will sort out the details.

As I've said before, I'm open to a conversation about blocksize as long as there is a well defined problem and proposed solution regarding scaling.

How magnanimous of you to allow others to define the problem and solution for you to criticize. Where's your well defined problem and solution?

I'm cool with things as they are.  The only valid argument I see is that mainstream VCs won't fork over any more money for us early adopters to put into our pockets unless they can have some assurance that they can subvert the system.  Boo-hoo as far as I'm concerened.  I've pocketed enough of their money already and am willing to try for the best of both worlds.  That is, to shoot for a Bitcoin that is worth having as well as a pocket full of green.

I've made no bones about the fact that I myself have serious concerns about 4-7 tps even when most native Bitcoin transactions are sidechains balancings and user 'safe deposit box' style transactions if/when crypto-currencies are more than a tiny tiny part of the world's financial activity.

You have an interesting prediction on the future of transactions. In fact, the goal is for Bitcoin proper to scale as needed for the types of payments it best serves. It will be much higher than 4-7 tps. Bitcoin only needs to serve where cash would best serve because Bitcoin is cash.

As I've said, Bitcoin means different things to different people.  Bitcoin is much more like gold bricks to me.  Most useful when never touched.  Unlike gold, BTC can be inventoried, split, and moved with relative safety.

None of you pro-fork people have given anything to hint at where you want to stop with your simplistic 'increase block size to scale' scheme, or where you want to draw the line with exclusions.  

That's like asking scientists when they will be done discovering stuff.

It would be cool if Hawking figured out the secrets of the universe before he kicks the bucket, but it won't make a difference one way or another to my financial statement.

All I hear is 'faith based' assertions that market forces will make everything work out.  Start talking numbers and we'll start analyzing.

You contradict yourself. Market forces use numbers by definition. Besides, you are the one with faith based in side chains that will make everything work out.

It's always been a no-brainer to me.  I'm no where near certain that they will solve some of the economic problems necessary for infrastructure support, but it's by far the best hope.  The alternative is to start over from scratch on Bitcoin.  No alt I've seen seems to be targetting the role I see as important (to my amazement.)  I'm for trying Bitcoin first and seeing if it can be made to work in spite of the resistance from within (be it ignorance or malice.)

In the mean time, we have one chance to stay within the constraints of what is achievable behind TOR and realistically likewise hardening methods.  I'm not interested in throwing it away... especially when there is no need and a very promising solution is around the corner.

TOR has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol. TOR was compromised recently. If it was used, it would be in very limited fashion.

I've never trusted TOR as many of my posts here in trolltalk make clear.  That's why I phrased things as I did.  Onion routing generally is adds overhead that can dwarf a small payload such as a Bitcoin transaction and other kinds of cloaking (specifically steganography) can add much more.

I think it more likely than not that at some point there will be the long promised 'cyber 9/11' and some big changes to the global internet even here in the 'free world'.  I've no intention of walking away from my stash just because some douche-bag government administrator and media echo-chamber says that a peer-2-peer internet fosters terrorism or whatever.  If it never happens then that is fine and great, but it means that crypto-currencies are just toys and never did become indispensable tools for wealth protection.  If it does then I want to be prepared and have my wealth protected by the most robust solution available.

[RoadStress]

Icebreaker now claims that he doesn't want a permanent 1 MB block size limit, even though he made a post titled:

"Permanently changing the 1MB transaction supply is a great idea ..."

as a play on the title of DeathAndTaxes' post, which simply argument that the 1 MB block size shouldn't be made permanent. His post ridiculed DeathAndTaxes' position, and strongly implied that he favored a permanent 1 MB restriction.

And he refuses to address how far his vision of a super expensive "super gold" transfer system, that only large financial institutions can afford to use, strays from the original Bitcoin white paper of a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

On the Hardware section we call him Icetard or many different names. He is a clown that imagines about himself as an advocate of crypto. It appears that the poll that he just created is against him already which is quite funny  And the thread that he just created speaks about says a lot about him and about the majority of the anti-fork team.

[iCEBREAKER]

I want the distribution of wealth in crypto to look like the pie chart of mining pool hashrates.

Bitcoin should be the largest, followed by many smaller ones, not a top-heavy 85%.
If 1MB starts creating problems, let the market and ecosystem deal with them for a while and see what they come up with.

Then, armed with empirical data, we can decide with higher consensus whether to change it, and by how much.

Again someone that is against raising the block size limit who wants to impose his views. So you want a distribution on wealth like a pie chart, but you also want the market and the ecosystem to deal with the problems. It can't be both ways. It's either your way or the market's way.

I am an advocate of crypto in general, including Bitcoin and altcoins.

LIES! The only thing that you advocate for is failed business like HashFast. Most of your post are praising and defending a failed (scammer in my view) company that managed to eat ~50M$ while leaving most of its customers with nothing.

I know that you will say otherwise, but please prove it that you are an advocate of crypto in general. Otherwise you just eat shit just like Mircea Popescu and his sock puppets accounts.

As they mature, free markets favor and tend towards the dynamic stability provided by Nash Equilibrium.  And so do I.  Mining pool self-regulation is a great, topical example.

I don't need to prove my crypto bone fides to some jerk who has only been here 7 hours longer than me.  My posting history, signature, and personal text (under the avatar) speak for themselves.

HashFast made ASICs to mine (IE process and secure) Bitcoins, not altcoins.  Could you possibly be more of a ridiculous assclown?  

[iCEBREAKER]

I think it more likely than not that at some point there will be the long promised 'cyber 9/11' and some big changes to the global internet even here in the 'free world'.  I've no intention of walking away from my stash just because some douche-bag government administrator and media echo-chamber says that a peer-2-peer internet fosters terrorism or whatever.  If it never happens then that is fine and great, but it means that crypto-currencies are just toys and never did become indispensable tools for wealth protection.  If it does then I want to be prepared and have my wealth protected by the most robust solution available.

Sorry, but our github overlords have decided it's more important to track every latte and bus ticket than ensure Bitcoin will always be a robust (IE TOR compatible) tool for wealth protection. 

Their VC benefactors are obsessed with ensuring we all use Bitcoin to buy cliche retail crap like coffee and pizza, not enduring the consequences of a 'cyber 9/11.'

I suggest you look into Monero, which is refactoring I2P out of Java for eventual inclusion in the standard wallet.

[sangaman]

Two hypocritical arguments I've seen brought up in this thread in one form or another multiple times:

1. Arguing that using what Satoshi wanted (a temporary 1 MB cap as an anti-spam limit) is not a valid point in favor of raising the block size limit, because it's an appeal to authority and therefore invalid. But then the same people, or at least same people arguing in favor of preserving the 1 MB limit, will claim that a hard fork of bitcoin could not be the "real" bitcoin or even that it would be an attack on the real bitcoin. Which is it? Should the original (post-limit being added) protocol of bitcoin be dogma? Or is putting weight on the original vision of Satoshi an invalid appeal to authority?

Personally, I think Satoshi's stated opinions and original plans/views for bitcoin should be taken into consideration but not be the end-all be-all. Not to appeal to authority, but he was clearly someone who knew a lot about what he was doing and I'll give him and others much more knowledgeable than I the benefit of the doubt in situations that are ambiguous to me.

2. The "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality. I think this is shortsighted, but it is also somewhat self-defeating. The 1 MB limit is a anti-spam prevention measure that currently does not seem to be preventing much of anything. The average block size is still comfortably under half of that limit. When the limit was first introduced, it looks like average block sizes were something around 1% of the limit. It was put in place to prevent extremely abnormally sized blocks, even though they had not been a problem up to that point. You could say the 1 MB limit was fixing something that wasn't broke.

Given the average block sizes of today, removing the 1 MB cap wouldn't be "fixing" anything in the short term because it wouldn't change anything. Rather, it would prevent the cap from becoming something it was never meant to be - an arbitrary limit that massively restricts bitcoin long term with wider adoption. What we need to do and what I hope happens, is put a plan in place soon that intelligently addresses the block size limit and which can be executed before 1 MB blocks become commonplace. If we wait until it is really a problem, we've waited too long and a fork will be even more difficult to execute.

[amincd]

+1 fantastic summary and post

[tvbcof]

Two hypocritical arguments I've seen brought up in this thread in one form or another multiple times:
...

I disagree with your conclusions, but it's nice to see someone thinking a bit.  I hope you continue to do so gradually feed in and play out various scenarios.

My thoughts on such things as participant inclusion, transaction fee paradigms, etc have changed radically over the time I've been contemplating these things.  Most of the main changes came within the first half year or so as I recall.  So did my BTC accumulation however.  It's actually hard for me to tell exactly how much my perceptions are changed by being a hodler.  I think not really all that much, but one never knows.  I believe that if I discovered all of my stash gone I would feel the same way about things that I do now though.

[Lauda]

blocking these accounts increases readability of the thread by magnitudes:

-R2D221
-LaudaM
-Roadstress
-Buffer Overflow
-kingcolex

You know it boggles the mind why you are even on this thread in the first place due to this quote:

The future of cryptocurrency will be not bitcoin

If your predicting this why all the hand wringing over the bitcoin update as it won't effect you in the slightest?

I didn't check the username at first, but when I saw your I knew that it can't be right. That guy is a troll and his posts make no sense. He's changing his standing point very often.
Such people will attack anyone who is for the fork. There are too many shills from MP and his team.

[Shak]

funny how some guys argue against fixing btc

but ok, hey, this is the internet, the only place where you can find people with an iq low enough to argue that humans have never been on the moon
just don't know why you bother trying to "convince" them, just let em ramble

[Buffer Overflow]

blocking these accounts increases readability of the thread by magnitudes:

-R2D221
-LaudaM
-Roadstress
-Buffer Overflow
-kingcolex

You know it boggles the mind why you are even on this thread in the first place due to this quote:

The future of cryptocurrency will be not bitcoin

If your predicting this why all the hand wringing over the bitcoin update as it won't effect you in the slightest?

I didn't check the username at first, but when I saw your I knew that it can't be right. That guy is a troll and his posts make no sense. He's changing his standing point very often.
Such people will attack anyone who is for the fork. There are too many shills from MP and his team.

Yeah, give people enough rope and they will hang themselves:

Name:    Muuurrrrica!
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 06:13:18 PM

Name:    homo homini lupus
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 05:53:10 PM

Name:    Pecunia non olet
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 05:55:09 PM

LOL

Is Gavin still hiding in his basket?

Are you still hiding behind sock puppets?

[Eamorr]

Two hypocritical arguments I've seen brought up in this thread in one form or another multiple times:

1. Arguing that using what Satoshi wanted (a temporary 1 MB cap as an anti-spam limit) is not a valid point in favor of raising the block size limit, because it's an appeal to authority and therefore invalid. But then the same people, or at least same people arguing in favor of preserving the 1 MB limit, will claim that a hard fork of bitcoin could not be the "real" bitcoin or even that it would be an attack on the real bitcoin. Which is it? Should the original (post-limit being added) protocol of bitcoin be dogma? Or is putting weight on the original vision of Satoshi an invalid appeal to authority?

Personally, I think Satoshi's stated opinions and original plans/views for bitcoin should be taken into consideration but not be the end-all be-all. Not to appeal to authority, but he was clearly someone who knew a lot about what he was doing and I'll give him and others much more knowledgeable than I the benefit of the doubt in situations that are ambiguous to me.

2. The "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality. I think this is shortsighted, but it is also somewhat self-defeating. The 1 MB limit is a anti-spam prevention measure that currently does not seem to be preventing much of anything. The average block size is still comfortably under half of that limit. When the limit was first introduced, it looks like average block sizes were something around 1% of the limit. It was put in place to prevent extremely abnormally sized blocks, even though they had not been a problem up to that point. You could say the 1 MB limit was fixing something that wasn't broke.

Given the average block sizes of today, removing the 1 MB cap wouldn't be "fixing" anything in the short term because it wouldn't change anything. Rather, it would prevent the cap from becoming something it was never meant to be - an arbitrary limit that massively restricts bitcoin long term with wider adoption. What we need to do and what I hope happens, is put a plan in place soon that intelligently addresses the block size limit and which can be executed before 1 MB blocks become commonplace. If we wait until it is really a problem, we've waited too long and a fork will be even more difficult to execute.

That's all very fine, but the optics to anyone looking in (especially newcomers) isn't very good.

[Stephen Gornick]

Every increase in fees means more utxo's fit the definition of "dust" in that spending them would require more fees than they are worth.  And fees will definitely increase.  [...]

a lot of the present holders [...] will likely find that they have a lot of unspendable outputs at some point.

And if I am using Bitcoin-Qt client, it isn't exactly in a hurry to spend these funds any time soon as its aim is to minimize fees, not spend the microtransactions before they become no longer economically spendable.

So regardless of whether or not you want to see a fork, it won't occur soon.  Anyone with a wallet holding transactions of small amounts (and that includes most anyone who uses Bitcoin regularly) would be wise to begin consolidating now while transaction fees are still cheap.