And what kind of blow will decentralization take when no one wants to run a node that only serves the purpose of settlement for a few large players? The BW cal

And what kind of blow will decentralization take when no one wants to run a node that only serves the purpose of settlement for a few large players? The BW calculations are misleading - that counts transmitting the blockchain to other nodes. To validate transactions and participate, you don't need to upload it, only download. Also, if we consider transaction history irrelevant since Lightning or other offchain solutions are OK, then all that is needed is the last few blocks and UTXO. As Satoshi said, once client-only is in, it doesn't really matter, and the answer is to not care how big it gets. (Sure, quoting him isn't an end-all, but it shows the original design goals.) Also, none of this explains why an increase to say, 2MB was never done, unless it's a game of chicken.