Bitcoin is currently a speculation vehicle. If the community really wants a currency, or even a good way to "wire" funds, I believe BTC has to be pegged to something.

Theres several things you can peg it to:

-Peg it to the actual average cost of mining. Data can be gathered from stats to arrive at an actual cost of mining, or a producer cost index (PCI). Take the higher value of the range, that way all the miners make something on the effort. Also this insures there will be miners in the distant future working to get the last of the BTC. The price of BTC will rise with the cost of living.  This will of course make mining in some areas more lucrative than other areas, and this is where the invisible hand will come in and dictate the logistics.

-Pick a commodity, silver for instance and peg it to that (but I would suggest that we create a free market exchange to base the silver price off of because the comex is jobbed by              pigs)

-Pick an existing currency and peg it to that as some ratio, china has successfully done that with the RMB to the USD. Why not peg it to the Brit pound or Canadian dollar. . I would say USD or Euro, but those are having lots of trouble.

as a speculation vehicle BTC is a joke.  Ive traded in about every kind of thing you can name, and trading BTC compares with the very worst of the worst penny stocks, topped off with very bad mechanics of money deposit and withdrawl. The volume is thin, large orders goose the market up or down. No real trading is possible as only 6.6 mill BTC exist and most of those are not traded, meaning that the trading pool  is essentially some small percentage of the actual float, Im guessing 10%.

My conclusion; Peg it to something. And use it as a real thing.