You are both missing the forest for the trees. Graph axes should scale in proportion to observed variance of the statistic being shown, automatically creating a "natural scale". The magnitude of the scale is of course proportional to the error in the measurement(s) you are showing, it has nothing to do with absolute numbers.
"The creator of the graph will naturally act to advance his own interests" -> "The biased creator of a graph with too much riding on his hypothesis will surreptitiously act to advance his own interests". People who do this are not worth listening to.
Fully agreed/conceded. I was addressing the graph consumer's point of view. There's definitely good practices the graph creator can follow to most effectively/honestly convey the information contained in the data.
When I see a graph that start's at some random point on the Y axis I assume the person is extremely biased and instantly ignore what they are saying. If I don't see error bars on data points I assume they have zero idea how accurate there information is.
Unfortunately I suspect that this approach is less common among the under educated because trying to create misleading charts is vary common.
"The creator of the graph will naturally act to advance his own interests" -> "The biased creator of a graph with too much riding on his hypothesis will surreptitiously act to advance his own interests". People who do this are not worth listening to.