I agree. All transactions, IP changes, renewals, etc. should have some fee that goes to the miners.
You might consider a certain amount of work to generate a domain, instead of a fixed total circulation. The work per domain could be on a schedule that grows with Moore's Law. That way the number of domains would grow with demand and the number of people using it.
Unfortunately
Namecoin the first Bitcoin fork losing ground because capitalists speculating on Bitcoin price. Since 2016 the number of altcoins dramatically increased in order to get a share from the cryptocurrency boom.
I strongly believe that all other altcoins except Namecoin are totally useless. Currently there are serious problems also in the development of Namecoin QT which according to my best knowledge not allowing to register .bit domains by choosing the coins the user may wish to spend. In the other hand Electrum-NMC very buggy and would need help from developers. In the future Namecoin will eventually going to beat all other altcoins because the current situation in the field of free speech is just getting worse.
Satoshi Nakamoto said that "
..number of domains would grow with demand and the number of people using it." But we have a problem today. Some people have registered hundreds of .bit domains and they not using it at all. Need to increase the fees in my opinion and that way squatters will be forced to give up many unused names.
I do use Namecoin and I will very likely always will exchange Bitcoin to Namecoin because as I said it is the only useful altcoin which ever created.