I think there are different aspects that people often mix and it's important to make clear. 1-fees are a protection mechanism that is usefull if for eg you have one entity that wants to attack the network and fill blocks (spam) on purpose. Well this strategy will deplete this attacker sooner or later. 2- Fees are also a mechanism to protect the network when there is increased normal demand, it tells you the network is at a limit, so fees must go up, and some people stop transacting or pay more, and increase the base fee. 3- Ordinals does not fit a single entity attack, it's multiple participants expecting more profit, is this spam? We can consider it if we want to, Bitcoin is what the consensus and nodes say it is. A Spam attack also pays fees, a spam email is just an email that you don't want. Can something effective be done to stop ordinals? If yes, do we want to do it? Imo bitcoin should be for transactions but I don't know if something effective can be done about it , I also believe this will fade out.