0.9 is not insignificant, but compared with block reward, the true (current) incentive providing block security is not in question, and that is what was being discussed.
How is that a useless figure? You'd expect it to have the same ratio per block or per day, so they're comparable when talking about the ratio of fees to rewards
Because we are talking about security of blocks and block scarcity, there is no limit on the space "per day", its all per block, similarly people don't make race attacks on a day, they make race attacks on a block.
Per block, fees average 0.9btc iirc.
Transaction reward is 12.5 btc
0.9 is not insignificant, but compared with block reward, the true (current) incentive providing block security is not in question, and that is what was being discussed.