This just packages the same misconceptions in a nicer presentation. It also only reviews the arguments of one side of the debate—the side whose position it endorses.

This is an incredibly lazy argument, and this self-righteous moral high ground is a complete nonstarter for me. Are we for a free market or not? How about a free and open protocol anyone can use? Yes, I'm sure most of us would love it if the bitcoin network was only used for actual bitcoin transactions. But guess what, it's not. It turns out people love to use bitcoin in ways that may seem irrational to us. Whether that's messages memorializing life events, Merkle tree roots of timestamped data, or meme jpegs, it doesn't really matter. There are ways to embed this data in bitcoin transactions, and the worst offenders will bloat the utxo set in such a way that it makes running and syncing a node harder for everyone joining the network. OP_RETURN was always a pragmatic solution here. Furthermore, the relay policy has increasingly little bearing on what makes it into blocks, much less what's allowable by consensus. All limiting mempool relay does is encourage third party, out-of-band tx relay, which further incentivizes mining centralization. Is there anyone who really thinks mining pools aren't already centralized enough? Next they're going to explain to us how no speak easies existed during American prohibition because alcohol was outlawed.

The icing on the cake is that filling blocks with 700KB of OP_RETURN data would actually go a long way towards Luke's goal of 300KB blocks to validate. (An argument that was interesting and thought provoking.) Most of the time to sync a new node is in validating transactions and mapping the UTXO set, to which OP_RETURN doesn't contribute as it's unspendable. It doesn't even get a witness discount!

I'm so tired of this debate. I get that you're morally superior, but at least develop a coherent argument I can entertain before throwing ad hominems and then claiming victimhood at the hands of the cabal.