1. PoW does not destroy (aka "burn") the economic value. Most of it ends up as cash flow to the utility companies, which means more demand for subsidized large infrastructure power projects, given that utilities are price-controlled and regulated (which means the political corruption of privatizing the profits and charging the costs to the public). There is some portion of the value traipsing into to the environment as "waste" heat (i.e. disordered), but there is friction in any system that interfaces with the tangible world, thus it isn't a unique feature of PoW.

2. The problem is not an incipient gain by a group able to hoist a more efficient monetary system on to society, but rather a gain which doesn't naturally diminish exponentially, because otherwise it sells the future to the past which is a reduction of degrees-of-freedom and incompatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics trend towards increasing entropy. The fiat masters try to unnaturally maintain the right of gain from seigniorage over the long-term being rewarded for being a top-down Coasian cost on society, which is low entropy and this top-down statis is why nation-states collapse over and over again throughout our human history.


Thus there is nothing wrong with the creator obtaining some exponentially diminishing seigniorage. And PoW's great contribution is in the objectively, competitive distribution which runs on auto-pilot and doesn't require ongoing seigniorage (except as pointed out above the seniorage of the government utilities it furthers and also the fact that economies-of-scale centralize it and create an ongoing seigniorage, which is really, really bad and why Bitcoin is in a scalepocalypse political clusterfuck as the power vacuum must be filled). But PoW doesn't actually destroy the value transferred in the process. Destroying all value will be akin to moving to infinite entropy (disorder) which would mean we could not exist.

Btw, what I am attempting to do is design and launch a variant of the root concepts explored by Satoshi's PoW, which I hope ameliorate the aforementioned power vacuum. However, even I will admit to you that my design can be gamed by whoever can convince society that an objective system is not a priority. But at least my design doesn't require that most people need to stop being apathetic (because they only have to make a decision to employ the objectively provably correct automated client/wallet software). It only requires that society has the correct ideological understanding of objectivity. So we must teach. Or alternatively that only those who do have that understanding stay on the well functioning fork of my design. With Satoshi's PoW, we can all have the correct understanding, but it doesn't help us avoid the fact the economics of PoW are naturally centralizing due to asymmetrically higher profits that accrue to those with more hashrate than others (and other forms of economies-of-scale such as cheaper electricity and the fact that @ArticMine's decentralized space heater concept is provably incorrect as I have exhaustively explained in my unpublished white paper).

Following rant is prompted by the usual argument between @ArticMine and myself flaring up again before I slept (just woke up).


Before you read this, please read Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons by Nicholas Taleb, the progenitor of antifragility.

I want to preface this rant with an acknowledgement that Monero comprises an important body of work that advanced our ecosystem's understanding and technology. However, what I found to be so ironic and what has irked me about Monero's community attitude/ideology since the start was this holier than thou religion that (only Monero's variant of) PoW was the Holy Grail which eliminated the evils of seniorage. They voiced superiority over every other project and economic scheme (although I end up agreeing with them about the centralization flaws in other schemes such as Dash's masternodes). And only their anonymity was worthy. Etc.. As it turns out, no system based on Satoshi's PoW avoids centralization long-term. And even the anonymity of Monero appears to me to be incompatible with reporting taxation totals to the authorities, thus afaics (IMO) meaning it can't possibly become mainstream and thus can't become a unit-of-account and thus will always be tied and enslaved to fiat. Monero folks were always telling me I had to work for free and could only get my ROI by having a large amount of capital to invest in XMR (i.e. a big boys club and I ain't in it):


Underlying implication and attitude was that I had better join them or end up being left behind as a failure (and that they had the larger grouping of smart people and so one guy on his own trying initiate something creative couldn't possibly compete). According to their groupthink, they felt smug to belittle anyone who claims there could be opportunity to go create something great and earn more than the most lucrative year of my career thus far ($350K in 2001). Instead they throw some bones out for the little guys in the form of measly donations. Hey if I just wanted a job earning $50 per hour, I could in theory go earn more than that back in Texas. One of the reasons for working every waking moment on this stuff is not just because it is very challenging and interesting work (and also for the social interaction given I am an extrovert), but also because of the potential financial upside given I am at the tail end of my most productive years. People have opportunity costs. My opportunity cost is that I am age ~52 with negative networth, no retirement, and minanarchist meaning I won't accept government handouts, so I can't just work for free for fun. That doesn't mean anybody owes me anything. We only can earn what we are capable of earning. In this ecosystem, the fact is that others can clone your open source work. There are factors to consider...  Any way for the moment I decided I just want to work on it, and not think about my potential ROI. I will not do an ICO. I am funded for some more months on my basic expenses, so I will just enjoy working on it and see if it can be launched. Then the free market can decide. Note I do want to acknowledge that several guys in Monero's community have been very generous to me. I think I've received on the order of ~15 - 20 BTC in total (at an average BTC price < $500 and I spent it on expenses) in total from those in the Monero community over the past 3 years. So perhaps my ranting above is insolent. I am trying to make a point about the evils of groupthink, not a personal admonition of individuals in that community per se.