This issue is bringing to the forefront of everyone's attention, the very real problems with scaling that Bitcoin faces. I realize that this is an unpopular thing to bring up, especially around these parts, but it's an objectively true fact -- whether or not the mempool/block space is being used by actual transactions (which was supposed to be the point of Bitcoin, at least that's what I thought -- before it turned into becoming "digital gold" that no one ever does anything with, and you're just supposed to hold it and never spend any, ever), would we not still be at the same point we're currently at, inevitably, from people presumably attempting to open up lightning channels to use lightning as a layer 2?

Either way it seems that it is an inevitability that a better solution for either scaling the mainnet/layer 1 bitcoin network will need to be developed, and/or we will have to come up with an alternative, better solution for layer 2 transactions/additional layer 2s for transactions which aren't hindered by the (IMHO) broken approach lightning takes.

So, whether or not people here at SN or elsewhere in the Bitcoin community want to acknowledge this, they should be focusing on trying to fix the scaling issues with bitcoin and stop trying to act like blockchain hall monitors who keep the mempool free of monkey jpegs they dislike. This has already proven to be a fool's errand, and I'd think that anyone looking at this from a more rational perspective as you seem to be yourself, would realize that you're not going to be able to stop people from engaging in this kind of shit. That's just what happens on a permissionless, decentralized system, and the idea that anyone is going to be able enforce this or that miners will choose to forego the very lucrative additional sats they are earning in fees, is out of their mind.