Bitcoin means many things to many people. These are all valid points. But fundamentally, as I understand it, away from the memes and craziness, per the White Paper, it is meant to be money. So, from an economic perspective, if it is money, somebody has to run the infrastructure. In the early days, the cypherpunks did this due to philosophical belief rather than financial reward. But if Bitcoin is to achieve global acceptance, that is no longer enough. And the formula driving block discovery can no no longer be realistically performed on standard home computers. So, it costs serious money and tech expertise to mine, meaning most of us cannot do it. In the future, transaction fees will have to be high to compensate miners for this cost and knowledge, as this expertise is scarce, to secure the network. Supply and demand! Plus there is increased regulatory risk on top. So, fees going up must be by design! Which means only high value transactions will go through the actual Bitcoin blockchain. Most transactions will move to second layer tech; like Lightning, and there are/will be others.
As Bitcoin adoption grows, most people will never directly interact with the Base Layer. Which many early Bitcoin adopters have stated would eventually happen. So, Bitcoin is already starting to achieve it's aim of seperating money and state; it just may not look like many people thought it would. From a technical pov, what I don't know is whether this means there is a risk of small pots of Bitcoin getting stranded. I guess that's where long term price vs transaction fees issue lies. However, appreciate there are other views, and lots of guys on SN know a lot more than I do...