Abstract Contributors: In the short term, L2 will compete with Ethereum, but in the long run, it is a way to help it defeat other L1s

Regarding the viewpoint of Base Protocol's Jesse Pollak that "Ethereum and L2 are not in a zero-sum competition", Abstract Chain contributor cygaar posted on X saying: "This might be a somewhat controversial opinion, but I do believe that L2 will compete with Ethereum's L1 in the short term. Many workloads (NFTs, transactions, DeFi, games) that once existed on L1 have moved to L2, resulting in reduced fees generated/destroyed on L1 over the past few years. However, when I say 'short term', it is because I believe that L2 is the only way for Ethereum ecosystem and ETH assets to compete with numerous new L1s. One of Ethereum's greatest features is its emphasis on decentralization. Unfortunately, most users don't care about decentralization until it's too late. 
L2 provides a way for Ethereum to maintain a highly decentralized platform while still being able to support fast and cheap transactions competitive with alt-L1s. What Jesse is saying here is that in the long run he hopes so much traffic can be serviced by L2 such that some of the fees currently generated by Ethereum will exceed those generated before the emergence of L2 - I tend to believe this is true.
In summary, I think we can admit that in the short term indeed there may be reduction in value accumulation at level one due to layer two but however from a long-term perspective Layer 2 benefits ethereum and will become ethereum’s method for defeating many emerging Level ones."