Reject it all you like but the fact is it works because it preserves capital in the chain (both theoretically and demonstrably) rather than eating it away and it explains a lot of things in a way that anecdotal observations of market cycles don't. There's nothing wrong with inflation as long as the new supply is adequately capitalised. One the other hand, if you allow that supply to be mined at zero difficulty, the market is simply going to value it at zero difficulty.

With Dash, it isn't "a few coins a month" it's more than half of all the new supply. We have the inflation anyway whether we mine it or give it away, so why not subject it to competitive mining and give it a robust opening price ? How on earth does making that supply a free gift mitigate the effect of inflation

This is known economics not rocket science. The fine art market is very similar - if an artist starts giving away their work for nothing it simply collapses the value of all their works in the secondary market as well.

Dash has now given up ALL the satoshi gains it ever made. It's the only one of the mineable top 30 coins to have breached all historical support levels and is now on a more or less permanent downward path with a steepening gradient. We're back at the satoshi price that existed 4 months after its birth. It isn't a "bear cycle" it's a death spiral and there are clear reasons for it which is that supporting the revenue of 5000 nodes at a near 100% profit margin is a COST believe it or not. That cost has to be paid from somewhere and right now its being paid straight out of the blockchain which is why it's continually losing value.

Your argument amounts to what I call the "washed up by the tide" theory of growth. The problem I have with that is that you're basically advocating for no more than an exit pump. It also doesn't matter what coin you're invested in - "washed up by the tide" isn't exclusive to Dash, you could pick any coin.