Oh, I know that.  By 'we don't need miners' I mean we don't need hoards generating bitcoins for little to no profit at current prices.  There will always be miners out there mining with very cheap or 'free' electricity, so transactions will always go through.

The hash rate has barely risen over the past few weeks so it seems we're well past the moment where GPU mining is attractive.  Next up is FPGA mining, assuming someone puts together an attractive package.