Wouldn't be easier for people to just start over with a new currency than deal with a hard fork?
Exactly. The confidence in Monero after the hard fork will be shuttered. It's much better to admit it and try again with new coin than to let the whole concept limp in the future because of the initial design problems.
If this hypothetical "perfect" cryptocurrency is ever designed, we can cross that bridge then. Hypothetically telling everyone how the hypothetical users of a cryptocurrency would react to a hypothetical hard fork brought on by the introduction of a hypothetical perfect cryptocurrency is...well...nothing more than your hypothesis.