This does make sense but it also reinforces for me the fact that more resources = greater chance of finding a coin because more power = more hashes/s.
Every 'lottery ticket' has an equal chance of 'winning' a coin but each persons chance to find a new coin is not the same for one person to the next - is that a fair conclusion?
That is in fact a reasonable conclusion.
The whole purpose of the coin generation system is really to figure out a way to distribute the coins in the first place. In theory, a cryptographically security trading system would be sufficient to meet the needs of Bitcoins without having to worry about the coin generation problem, but then the problem would arise in terms of who gets to allocate the coins? That implies a central authority of some kind which is also political power when you have that authority.
There could have been other systems for handing out the initial set of coins... for example each new node would "automatically" be allocated 0.1% of whatever coins were left in a "bank" or some other scheme. Each method of handing out new coins has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in this case somebody receiving the "new" coins must do something very difficult before they get those coins.
For myself, I think this is about as "fair" of a distribution system as could be reasonably set up all other things considered. It isn't perfect and certainly there is some "gaming" that can happen, but it does keep those who are gaming the system under control and makes sure they don't have a monopoly on all new coin output as well. All of those nodes in a huge network are also participating with the other aspects of the network and verifying transactions too, so there is some additional merit to the idea that server farms ought to get paid for the extra work they are doing. Most other digitial coin allocation methods usually favor even more those who have massive server farms or cheap 3rd world labor. In this case those kind of individuals are explicitly planned for and their advantage is muted to something not nearly as harmful to the entire network.
I've mentioned this previously in another thread, but the issue of allocation of the initial currency is something that has precedence in other currency systems too. When the Deutschemark was established as the currency of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany.... following World War II), each German citizen was given a certain amount of money (about 100 Marks plus some conversion from previous currency systems). The exact allocation was a little more complicated, but the point is that most Germans were given roughly the same amount of money to start with and differences in wealth since then have been due to industry, thrift, and good fortune. A similar system happened with the merger of East & West Germany, where the West German Mark absorbed the East German Mark. Prior to the Deutschemark in 1948, many Germans were even using cigarettes from American GI's as the existing currency was pretty worthless. The issue of how to re-start a failing economy is certainly an interesting intellectual exercise, and it is even more interesting to see how it worked in practice.
In the case of Bitcoins, it is a question of how to start the economy in the first place. Once it is going, the generation of coins is more academic and relatively trivial.... pretty much how the Bitcoin economy can remain stable.
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