One should mine to support the security of the blockchain. If you are here only for greed please see yourself out.
I agree with you in principle but it costs money to mine. The returns on the energy investment individuals are making is not encouraging.
people didn't mine gold because they wanted a gold-based economy. they did it because gold had value to whoever found it.
right now, a lot of bitcoin miners are mining paycoin at 3-8x the daily income. (down to about 2.5x now). Ive mined more in the last 2 days then I was able to by mining BTC for almost 7 days otherwise. Combined with multiple negative changes in the difficulty recently, I
KNOW that my investment in mining hardware is well on the way to a positive return.
I put 3x SP31 units online a little over a week ago, and estimated that they would be profitable if:
a) bitcoin price stays >$300 and difficulty adjustments average <3.5% for the next year
b) bitcoin price gradually increases to >$600 and difficulty adjustments average <5% for the next year
c) bitcoin price gradually increases to >$1000 and difficulty adjustments average <7.5% for the next year
because of the last drop, the coming expected drop, and the paycoin profits, my return in any of the above scenarios is already about 6% higher.