Mining doesn’t create bitcoins though. They are created on a schedule. Miners just burn power on useless calculations to compete for a share of the scheduled distribution.
Didn't more modern currencies (e.g. ETH post switch to Proof-of-Stake) solve a lot of that[0]?
[0] I own no crypto and have no horse in that race, just from what i understood from online discourse.
Ethereum did the change, Bitcoin is stuck with the current mining of small blocks due to politics, it could've moved to bigger block sizes many years ago but the miners blocked the move since it would be less profitable.
So Bitcoin is locked into its current wasteful state with no end in sight.