Say you did fork Bitcoin, and 95% of miners moved over to this new blockchain so they could be paid 50 BTC forever.
Now, 95% of non-miners stay with the real Bitcoin blockchain, and 5% of miners.
So 95% of miners are now mining this worthless fork that no one is actually using for transactions, because non-miners are still using the real Bitcoin blockchain instead. The price drops on said worthless fork because no one is using it, and therefore no one wants it. It starts to see values along the lines of Solidcoin when compared with real Bitcoins.
Meanwhile, the 5% of miners who stayed with the original Bitcoin blockchain are still happily mining along and keeping transactions moving along, the currency still has value, and people are still making transactions with it.
Interesting to think about though...