So here's an obvious observation. Instead of complicated pooled mining solutions, it would be possible to lower the difficulty and proportionately reduce the number of coins awarded for each generated block.

Currently the difficulty is set such that the target is 6 blocks per hour. Each block awards 50 coins. That's 300 coins per hour distributed to 6 individuals. Suppose the target were 60 blocks and the award were 5 coins per block. It would still produce 300 coins, but they would go to 60 individuals. On average, a given machine would generate 10 times as many blocks but earn exactly the same number of coins. The average time that a new bitcoin user would have to work before generating their first coins would be one tenth what it is now.

It could go further of course. The target could be 300 blocks per hour and each block award 1 coin.

Of course, blocks don't exist just to distribute coins. There may be excellent technical reasons which I'm not aware of which make it undesirable to increase the rate of block generation.