Let's list some more contributions that Bitcoin users bring to the table for this experiment to work. Once we have seen the value they bring, we will know how to make a success of this.
Miners are the producers of block chain, which is sold to users, which need it to put their transactions on. The product is made by miners, and the customers are the users. Users need to buy tokens from miners and need to pay fees to get their transactions registered on the block chain made by miners. That's what's bitcoin is about: the selling of block chain from miners who make it, to users who buy it.
Essentially, there are about 20 companies that sell this product: the 20 important mining pools. They subcontract the hashing work to "miner hardware owners", which get paid for that, and they deliver the consensus block chain to the users, who can read it to prove their transactions in it.
You could say that the mining pools are like Toyota ; the miner hardware owners are like the subcontractors that Toyota uses to make the brakes, the wind shield, the fuses, .... and the users are the customers that buy Toyota cars.
With that difference that the mining pools are not a single company, but a consortium of mining pools that come to oligarchic agreement of consensus, and produce a single block chain.