Re: Bitcoin mining pointless?

Pointless? Mining makes money...
Or are you trying to ask how do the coins themselves have worth, like how/where do the people you pay in coins get paid in cash?

No.
The correct answer is that the whole btc network relies on the proof of work made by all the participants, including the miners.
No mining, no bitcoin network.

So what of the difficulty of the task that the miners have to complete? This is artificially inflated for a particular reason fundamental to how the btc network works?

Difficulty is self adjusted by the network, to keep the block generation (and therefore the btc generation) at a regular pace.
But, as total hashrate capacity is bigger, the whole network is more secure, and less likely to be attacked.