Forgive me for saying this again, but using inflation as a means to pay miners (or anyone else) sounds a lot like a government "trick".
It is, in a way, except that it's exactly Satoshi's trick that makes these coins possible. Since the network has no access to resources from outside the network, it can only rely on internal resources to reward miners. Which basically comes down to issuing coins out of thin air. No one disputes that this is how PoW coins work. The only issue is what happens "in a long time" when the rewards diminish to near zero or zero.
If you don't like issuing coins out of thin air, then you really can't like Satoshi-style PoW coins. You wouldn't be alone, BTW, there are plenty of critics.
Goddamnit no. All of the critics are wrong. PoW coins are
not created out of thin air. It costs thousands of dollars in computing power to mine a single block, and that doesn't even include the computing costs of all the miners that didn't win the block. That is real, intrinsic value.
- fiat money is created out of thin air
- Proof of stake coins are created out of thin air
Proof of Work is value by design.