Quote from: Peter R on April 24, 2014, 06:17:00 AM

For me it comes down to the simple fact that PoS rewards those who already hold the most wealth--they no longer even need to work for it.

It rewards everyone who participates in proportion to their holdings. Everyone gets 10%. They do need to work for it, though: they need to validate transactions. Only people who operate full mining nodes get the dividend. Coins held in cold storage get nothing.

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I think this creates more opportunities for rent-seeking and less impetus for innovation.

I don't see why you think that.

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With PoS, consensus is formed by those holding stake. In other words, those who already have the most also get to make the rules.

With PoW, those who can afford the best mining rigs get to make the rules. Either way it is the richest sector. I think if anything, the barrier to entry is lower with PoS, since you can start smaller. You don't need as much computing power to make a contribution.

(This wasn't always the case. You used to be able to mine Bitcoin on a desktop computer; and that was a good thing. PoS will return us to those days, now long gone. PoW was also necessary as a way of distributing coins, to help boot-strap crypto-currencies. However, we are now past the boost-strapping stage.)

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Look at who accrues the new coins in your 10% dividend model: they accrue to the largest stake holders! It's no longer a coin-distributoin mechanism--it is a way for those with first access to new money to benefit un-proportionately. Sounds a bit like the Fed.

Not at all. Everyone who participates gets 10%, no matter how small their stake. It is still a coin-distribution mechanism. That you say it isn't, makes me wonder if you understand it. It will distribute coins more widely, since mining is so much easier. Everyone can benefit; it's not reserved for the people with warehouses full of ASICs or with the technical knowledge to run them.

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PoS supporters appeal to idea of the "greater good" (less electricity consumed).

Why is consuming less electricity a bad thing? You keep talking about work, as if it were noble. Miners still have to do work in PoS; they still have to validate transactions. That's good, productive work. Solving arbitrary hashes is wasteful work. It's like paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again. The only thing it achieves is network security, which can be achieved equally well without it.

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1. For the greater good, we must stop this wasteful bitcoin mining and we will all be richer!

2. For the greater good, we must create more coins so that we can direct them towards important projects that the free-market neglects!

3. For the greater good, we must incentive spending to keep the people employed!

4. For the greater good, we must create more coins so that we can lend them to people to stimulate the economy!

The first point is evidentially true. Other things being equal, less waste is good. The later points don't follow from the first point. Points 2, 3 and 4 could equally happen in a PoW system. They aren't problems specific to PoS. I think your reasoning here is very unsound. You are inventing policies and attributing them to PoS, and then using them to attack it.

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Bitcoin favours efficiency. Our current system favours debt and consumption.

PoW is not efficient; that's the point. It favours a never-ending arms race of escalating consumption of computing resources, presided over by an elite with the capital to buy it and the expertise to run it.