There is a vast difference between what software developers have been chattering about in the background versus what the users actually experience in the field.

To the user, talk of a fee market is equivalent to talk about block size - various opinions are tossed about, but it doesn't really impact them.  Fees have been low for 6 years.

We see this with the actual data - no fee pressure on average for the entirety of bitcoin's history.  We see this with the recent stress tests, which exposed dumb wallet behavior WRT fees.   Users -and software- had the expectation 

Remember, this is not a judgement on whether or not fee market/pressure should exist.  It is simply a factual observation that users/market have not experienced this new economic policy.

That opens the question - why now?   Why make bitcoin growth more expensive at this time in its young life?  Many smart people would prefer that bitcoin continue to grow, rather than making the system more expensive to use right now.

Choosing "let a fee market develop" -- today -- is picking economic sides, picking winners & losers in the market.

This new policy should be debated and consensus achieved, not simply rolled out by fiat without user notification.

Otherwise it is engaging in precisely the economic wizardry that this thread opened with decrying.

Just like block size, there are multiple sides to the fee market debate.  However, Bitcoin Core has (unfortunately) outsized decision making power in that simply avoiding progress on block size limit will achieve the "let a fee market develop" economic policy change.  Ironic but true - sitting around and doing nothing dumps users into a new economic policy.