If there is only one way to get it right, then it would be tail emission from launch.
In gmaxwell's words, that's a pretty strong attractor in the design space, with nothing arbitrary about it.
It's the most fair possible coin distribution.
Which is exactly why many (most?) people don't like it, because they want to have an edge over later adopters.
Any such change done at a later point can disappoint greatly the early birds. I can see why any later such change can be seen as bad. And I think that you know that such a change done now in bitcoin can easily trigger a fork. Yes, it's all about money/investment, much more than we'd like to admit. The use-as-a-coin is somewhat secondary.
Whether tail emission is fairer or not compared with what Bitcoin has is highly debatable imho. I expect the two different models come with completely different models for price evolution. So imho, in a way or another, both are fair.
For now Monero seems to have its tail emission right, but I don't know the details well enough, hence I may be wrong. And they've had this from start too.