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This. It can never be economically zero as it has been "bootstrapped" once, in 2009. Someone will always have incentive to mint cheap.

Yes, the problem is it only does that around every two weeks - and that’s at a normal block rate.

If hash rate were to suddenly drop say 90% then it could take months to adjust

Yes, apart from everyone's views on crypto itself.

As a programmer or system designer I urge everyone (who hasn't already) look at the "system design" of bitcoin ! It's beautiful and elegant, like a self-correcting organism ! Ja sure it's not perfect, but dammit it's a hell of a lot better than what I could have come up with :)

I'm of course ONLY talking about the system-design components here: (difficulty, mining, minting rate, consensus, ledger etc)

YMMV