Then why should we be in the mood to respond?

The difficulty increases to compensate for increased/decreased network hash rates.  2016 blocks should take 14 days.  Say it only takes 11 days.  The network responds by increasing the difficulty by (14/11)-1 * 100% ~= 27.3%

( Note that this is purely a reactionary method that assumes linearity, so if in the last 6 days the hash rate really climbed by 50% while before that it only climbed by 10% and there's no reason to believe that's going to stop any time soon, the difficulty will have to be adjusted by a relatively big percentage again in another 2016 blocks' time. )

And yes, your prediction is pretty much spot-on.  Solo mining for anything but the big farms is already out, and pooled mining for small time miners is also on its way out for those expecting to see any returns on it (never mind profiting).

Of course, you knew this when you got into it, right?

( Just wait until July/August 2016 rolls around. Woo! )