Wow, this thread devolved quickly.
But if I might probe an assumption of the OP- why do people need to be involved in mining in order to participate in a cryptocurrency system?
Well I think when people are mining it empowers them as they are doing something to earn the coins, and they are participating in the network.
But then again. perhaps we could just do the mining ourselves and then distribute the coins based on other criteria, similar to Devcoin.