Right, so why not do the inverse? The more users the easier to generate? The way things have been done the distribution is so ridiculously skewed to a tiny base of early users it is a systemic risk.
It turns out the the computing power to coin relationship is a red herring. More people doing something completely unnecessary doesn't create more value.
Currency value must be bound to real world economic value. A loaf of bread today needs to trade for pretty close to a loaf of bread tomorrow. Otherwise, as you pointed out at the beginning you get into a hoard and dump mindset. Not exactly the point of a "currency"
If a million more people want to trade loaves of bread tomorrow you're going to need more coins to enable the transactions. If they eat all the bread, you may need less coins to rectify the glut. The real interesting questions are where to do they come from, and where do they go?
There have been some really interesting an maddening threads in the past. A french guy proposed what he called the Universal Dividend. Everyone should get coins every year just for being alive. He argued it evened out the early adopter problem. I argued against him!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=796.0(UD is a proposed real world solution that goes way beyond bit coin!)