There are a number of community-based alternative currencies in circulation right now, and their success revolves largely around the type of incentives I mentioned in my original post.
Then why bother with Bitcoin and it's silly mining. Just use those currencies.
They are paper currencies, and therefore somewhat difficult to send over a wire.
If you made them digital, and employed a published transaction block chain and the cryptographic methods of Bitcoin, you would have something along the lines of what I am suggesting.
Mining seems to me to be a bit of a distraction, in that it seems to attract peoples attention out of proportion to its importance. The most important parts of Bitcoin, in my opinion, are how it prevents double spending without a central mint, and the cryptography employed to keep coins secure and transfer them between users.