at a certain point shutting down the mines will be neccesarry.
$436 and falling
I wouldn't get your hopes up. Mining hardware has been pre-ordered already which will probably trickle in all the way to 2015. The odds of the network hash rate going down are pretty low unless the price is low enough that
newer ASICs can't even beat the costs of electricity. You can't factor in device RoI for network growth when it's already been paid for and the companies have terrible track records of providing refunds.