Right, but there are people who may choose the less polluting path if it was available. So if something is consensus valid it should be an option and if it is valid and a better choice it shouldn’t have limits as those limits only produce more damaging outcomes.

Now changing consensus rules is a different discussion. If we limit op return size via consensus change we solve some of the issue of direct to miner submissions, but we leave spammers only routes that are worse for the chain. I don’t think you stop spammers you just push them to old school methods that bloat the utxo and then the debate will start over and people will suggest op_return as a way to reduce bloat. The luke jr the 2nd will come out and say op return is only for pedos and they will soft fork to fix it and on and on and on.

In the end it doesn’t matter…at all. Then blocks are 4mb max. If we can’t keep up with that growth civilization is doomed.