+1 on the comments below by Thomas. 

"Fee market" is not a 
binary option, either on or off.  Like all markets it exists in varying 
degrees over time and with more or less influence on the process of which it is 
part of.  As it stands now, and likely for another decade at least, the 
fee per tx constitutes a very, very weak market signal for the miners since it 
makes up less than 0.5% of the rewards paid for mining a full block. This is the normal and expected scenario, aimed at driving use of Bitcoin 
as widely and cheaply as possible so that network effects will cement 
Bitcoin for the future, for all users.

As a comparison, how many people would have
 taken up using email if there had been a per-message fee and hourly 
sending limits with only the highest-fee messages being delivered? And 
how would it look if the email protocol developers imposing fees 
& hourly sending limits were pushing hard for use of another email-delivery protocol on
 top of the existing one?

> To: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:56:48 +0200
> Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev]	Răspuns: Personal opinion on the fee market from a worried local trader
> From: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> 
> On Friday 31. July 2015 03.21.07 Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > If I was a miner and you want me to include your transaction for free,
> > you're asking me to give you money
> 
> What?
> 
> Ask yourself; why do miners include transactions at all? What it the incentive 
> if there really is only less than 0.8% of income to be derived from fees?
> 
> Miners don't get payed by fees.  They won't need to get payed by fees for 
> decades to come. Maybe you want to re-do your math, it seems off.
> -- 
> Thomas Zander