Can you highlight the part of the white paper you're referring to?
It's the design, folks. Read the paper and think about what it's saying.
Satoshi was acutely aware that 1MB blocks could only encode a couple thousand transactions. So what do you think "the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees" means in practice?
Not a <$100 fee, that's for sure.
> The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions
If enabling small casual transactions was one of the goals, then they've failed terribly on that point.
Again, people don't like Satoshi's endgame vision. This is working as designed. Bitcoin was designed to evolve into this. It was not intended to stay static; it's in the whitepaper.
Break out of the groupthink. It's worth realizing when everyone around you is being irrational.
Try to find a quote and paste it. It's a useful exercise, because it forces you to constrain your thinking. Either from the whitepaper or from http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/
I don't think Satoshi said this, but I'll be happy to admit to being wrong.
In fact, here is Satoshi's clear and complete vision from the very beginning:
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/16/
Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It'll be distributed to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half every 4 years.
first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins etc...
When that runs out, the system can support transaction fees if needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.
Satoshi Nakamoto
You can also find copies of an email Satoshi wrote to Mike Hearn where he said essentially the same thing.