I have been harping a point that I didn't connect to the first stentence of the whitepaper until re-reading it in this post.

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

It doesn't say "would allow all payments" it says "would allow online payments"!

Perhaps that has been subconsciously present since my first reading. Satoshi's opinion appears consistent with my hope for a future where we use gold and silver in person and bitcoin online.

I think the goal, of course, should be to allow all payments be made either way, and that would imply scaling up bitcoin. But with the support of gold and silver in-person it isn't strictly necessary for it to handle all payments, only online payments.