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The computing power directed at bitcoin is already huge. You would need to persuade those miners (who also verify transactions don't forget) to switch to your new coin. If they stop mining bitcoins then they fall behind their competitors. They then have to swallow the risk of mining a new coin that has no users yet.

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But presumably the computing cost would be much lower for the new coin, since it'd be earlier on in it's mining history. Who knows where the respective expected values stabilize.

Also, what if the new coin has some minor technical improvement? How do we know that won't outweight the established network effects?

We don't know any of those things. That's why it would be higher risk to start mining it. The rewards might be huge or they might be nil.

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