how badly misunderstood Proof of Stake is, especially since it's so frequently compared to interest, which it is not.
I'd love to read more about this, if you can elaborate. I view this as interest too. Is the distinction you are making about "new" coins rather than payment from existing coins from the loanee ?
Sure. I'm real busy right this minute, but a quick overview:
Interest is a cost appended to a loan, as in the lender is repayed the principle and a fee. The fee is interest.
Proof of stake is actually unrelated to this, though the calculation is the same. Proof of Stake is actually an alternate proof of work mining, it is just a different method than hitting the block template with many thousands of attempts at solving an equation.
I'll go into why this matters later.