> paying a high price

Monero's transaction fees are less than Bitcoin's:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-xmr...

And Monero's fees decrease with larger block sizes (Monero has dynamic block sizes) whereas Bitcoin has a fixed block size and fees must increase to compete to be included in the block.

I wasn't talking about fees, but about chain size, utxo set size, and code complexity. Fees are always low when blocks are far from full.