If the hardware had been about 20 years more advanced in 2009, we probably would have never had the scaling debate and had gone to 1+ GB blocks with no problems. But due to bandwidth limitations, such an increase to spread mass adoption to several billion people would increase latency and lock out average users from participating in block confirmation (we are already locked out of mining unless we join mining pools).

I've been developing software for over 2 decades now. We have LN, but it needs massive improvements in usability if it's ever to solve the scaling problem. Hodling both just in case.