[dithering]

Of course it's a good point, it's one of mine ;)

My expectation is we'll end up with "to avoid a hard cliff between a network reliant on mining and one reliant on transaction fees (and the inevitable instability of the transition), and to ensure a robust mining ecosystem, we're going to extend mining, at a reduced rate, for just a few more months..."

And there's an apparent benefit for end-users, too - if you want Bitcoin to be a practical payments mechanism (as opposed to store of value), transaction fees have to be kept comparable to credit cards. But the electricity used by the network still has to be paid for. What could be more tempting than magicing a few more bitcoin out of thin air to pay the miners?