You are correct that bitcoin is heavily dependent on miners. That said, I don't think you can simply "take away the Bitcoin miners". An excellent example of this is China's recent ban on bitcoin mining, which quickly dropped the network hash rate by >50%. Today, only a few months later, the hash rate has returned[1], and those miners are back online on the other side of the world. Don't underestimate the power of incentives.
[1] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate