Now there are some 10 000 miners, how much pilferers will remain? 1 000 ?!
Why would the number of miners decrease? I guess when equilibrium is reached difficulty would be at least what is now - therefore at least as many miners as there are now.
Of course, number of miners will not decrease - it just will be frozen @ constant = some 10 000 people, while mining hardware is working (for some years).
but this freeze is Bitcoin society COLLAPSE. 10 000 frozen people DO compromise the IDEA of world-wide currency.