Ok, my secret inner circle plan will work there too, you with me?
Answering the question in the title: it's easy - no one wants to spend their money on mining equipment that is constantly getting cheaper.
Another reason is - few people already have
A LOT of hashing power and they get an advantage compared to a regular folk. And regular folk is not happy with this fact at all
It is a complex question, but the main thing is this.
In POS, wealth becomes more concentrated at the top over time and there is no way to break your way into the economy without the 'permission' of existing stakeholders.
In POW, although mining costs can and usually become prohibitive, there is always an entry into the economy.
I agree with you regarding the PoS situation, but strongly disagree with PoW.
Mining costs are ramping up with a speed of lightning and reward for block finding is going down. At some point there is no way to enter this economy since there are "top miners" who will simply outmine you.
Unlike top PoS stakeholders, top miners need to remain competitive. It means they need to have a revenue stream to perform timely hardware upgrades in order to stay on top of the game. But that's not an easy task because in a balanced PoW system mining is a break-even game, not a revenue stream, unless some shady schemes are employed with various mining derivatives and paper gigahashes for sale. So people need to be properly educated to not fall for this. If you don't own a physical mining equipment it will all end sour, like with paper gold.
In the grand scheme of things miners need to also do something useful for society in order to have a revenue stream and maintain their position (again in a balanced system mining is neither losing, nor gaining money), but doing so would prevent other actors from gaining total control over network. Freedom is vigilance, it's not for free and miner is your weapon.
I have a new PR stunt for you guys:
PoW - Proof Of Warforfreedom
PoS - Proof Of Snakeoilsalesmen
Good day
