You can't run a blockchain without miners either; we're both omitting things from our models.

you need the post office too - don't see your point

my original point is that there are distributed database engineers who are excited about the technology behind blockchain, hi!

If that is true what happens when all the bitcoins are basically mined out? That doesn't seem to jive.

Then miners need to recoup their costs entirely by transaction fees, or they stop mining and the network will be (even more) vulnerable to hostile takeover.