Would it be possible to halt all mining power except say 1 PH/s worth, and let the difficulty readjust normally (keep in mind that bitcoin difficulty would be 30x less), and have like a first come first serve sort of thing where for all OTHER bitcoin miners to begin mining again, they would have to sign up to a "queue", and be entered in as the rest of everyone ahead of them are allowed to mine again. Would this be possible? Would it actually make bitcoin difficulty MUCH easier until everyone was back in from the "queue", or am I just thinking too much?
The purpose of mining is to secure the network. "Free coins" are the compensation, not the reason. It isn't feasible but if it was, it would undermine the security of the network and allow an attacker to accomplish an attack with a 97% reduction in cost.