> The result is that you get to mine at a lower difficulty than the rest of the population. Everyone mines at the same difficulty. If you choose not to mine fo

> The result is that you get to mine at a lower difficulty than the rest of the population. Everyone mines at the same difficulty. If you choose not to mine for a period (and the difficulty adjusts to a lower level), you're just encouraging more miners to fill your void - your absence represents new opportunity for miners who might not have been profitable at the higher/original difficulty. Even if new mining doesn't increase difficulty to the original level, you're always mining at the same difficulty as the rest of the population, so your supposed gain is everyone else's gain, meaning it's effectively non-existent. In other words, just because you can affect difficulty by temporarily choosing not to mine, your absence (and lower difficulty) does not decrease participation of other miners; if anything, it will encourage more mining and ultimately cause the difficulty to increase for everyone.