“When it comes to arbitrary data, there are currently no other tools that provide for censorship resistant permissionless distribution and long term storage at a cost like Bitcoin”
Because at the moment, Bitcoin allows exploiting the loose flexibility of script, which permits storage without compensation payment for storage resource. Furthermore, due to historical reasons the payment for that storage exploits a discount which has not being balanced with any mechanism.
Transactions competitively pay for the space they take up in a block. This is true of all transaction types dating back to the Genesis block.
Your argument seems to suggest Transactions should pay for the storage of that block in all nodes, and somehow pay node operators for that storage. Bitcoin users are already inventivized to perform actions to receive Bitcoin for goods and services just as they'd spend. Furthermore, theres no way to identify all node operators that doesnt step into the realm of a central vetted registration.
The virtual byte transition and effective 4:1 discount for signatures of segwit transactions was balanced (albiet poorly) to incentivize use of segwit over p2pkh. As Peter Wuille informs "There is a reason why this discount is justified: in legacy transactions, creating a transaction output is significantly cheaper than spending one. This encourages unspendable dust: outputs that were created at a time when fees were low may become uneconomical to spend (= cost more to spend than they're worth) when fees are high. This is a burden on the entire ecosystem, as full nodes (for now, at least) need to maintain fast access to the set of all unspent outputs."
“Transactions competitively pay for the space they take up in a block.”
Transactions do not pay for “block space”, Transaction Bidders pay to miner-entities for compensation of the marginal lost competitiveness at block propagation due to that marginal transaction.
"I shouldnt have to pay as much because I dont like how others are using Bitcoin" - stomps feet
“Your argument seems to suggest Transactions should pay for the storage of that block in all nodes, and somehow pay node operators for that storage.”
The original Bitcoin design had an original Bitcoin node; which performed the storage and mining activity in one. Due to historical reason the mining activity got separated from the original Bitcoin node and now the Bitcoin system has an unstable and not sustainable status quo in which the nowadays mining operators (probably in proxy with popular big mining pools) will reunite the storage activity on their nodes, making the network centralized and thus taking the control of it.
“Bitcoin users are already inventivized to perform actions to receive Bitcoin for goods and services just as they'd spend. Furthermore, theres no way to identify all node operators that doesnt step into the realm of a central vetted registration.”
Nothing relevant for the argumentation identified.
What do you want people to pay for
“As Peter Wuille informs "There is a reason why this discount is justified: in legacy transactions, creating a transaction output is significantly cheaper than spending one. This encourages unspendable dust: outputs that were created at a time when fees were low may become uneconomical to spend (= cost more to spend than they're worth) when fees are high. This is a burden on the entire ecosystem, as full nodes (for now, at least) need to maintain fast access to the set of all unspent outputs."”
That could be incentivated with the already working pay for transaction byte size, which can be evidenced observing entities consolidating their UXTOs.
