But what about the new problems it would introduce? I run a full node and even now it eats a significant portion of my bandwidth. With even larger blocks I would probably drop off the network altogether. And I'm sure I'm not the only one out there in this situation. Therefore, I don't think Core developers are exaggerating in their concerns about the centralization pressure caused by overly large blocks.
Moreover, wouldn't increasing the block size simply kick the can down the road? One advantage of the current fee pressure is that it strongly encourages the development of 2nd layer solutions. There are right now at least three independent teams working on Lightning Network implementations and they seem to be making quick progress...