I'm surprised how many people think that mining (i.e. doing it just to get the coins) is the most important thing.

100 blocks take about 17 hours to generate. I'm talking about longer dropouts due to natural disasters, etc. It's easy to say "should suspend the acceptance of new coins created", but hard when you're faced with economic reality of supply and demand in a 24/7 economy of a busy city/country.

I don't mine and I don't intend to mine.
I'm beginning to believe that bitcoin reward for mining is a bottleneck that will inhibit the growth and performance of the block chain and will be the cause of inefficiencies and complexity that is bordering on insane considering how hashing power is growing daily. I don't have a solution for this, but I'm actively thinking about it.

Yes, I read the white paper (Satoshi's PDF) and it doesn't talk about the economic reality. It's more like a spherical horse in a vacuum - technical proposal suited for ideal situations.