[jgord]

Its a transient equilibrium during growth, not a zero-sum game. We could see lower fees and miners earning more :

Hypothetically, if blocksize went up tomorrow by 8x, then potentially fees might drop by 4x and volume of transactions go up by 8x .. then miners will be making 2x in fees per block, for maybe 2% extra cost.

That has other flow on effects - if fees are lower bitcoin can accommodate people using it as a day to day currency, then its utility and user base goes up, then the valuation in USD goes up, the value of the bitcoins miners earn/save goes up, etc.

I think there are miners who understand that there is a sweet spot of fees being low enough to facilitate higher daily usage and growth. Also, the majority of their current income is not in fees, but rather in 'coinbase', the reward for mining the block [ which is how new bitcoin money supply is injected into the system ]. They are highly vested in the valuation of USD/BTC, so they will do well if the user base of bitcoin grows.

[Frogolocalypse]

None of the nodes users, which define and police consensus in bitcoin, is interested in reducing the security of the network to allow miners more control. This is the fourth failed coup attempt of the bitcoin network, and the only thing that it has demonstrated, is the resilience of the network against large corporate centralization attempts. Segwit might very well be the last architectural change of the protocol.