You and Anonymint have been debating these issues since before Bitshares. I remember reading on Bitcointalk.
My opinion on Proof of Work is it favors TOTAL Proof of Work. Eventually botnets run by AI will do all the mining, probably by stealing CPU cycles. If government can come up with Stuxnet they can figure out a botnet to own Bitcoin. I think it is actually only a matter of time before humans are no longer profitable to be involved in mining because human labor has a cost while botnets don't require any human labor.
Proof of work in my opinion WILL be ungovernable once the block reward halving, difficulty increases, etc, push all the humans out of the mining roles. But hey maybe that was the idea all along? To be ungovernable by any human and let the AI control the whole of POW.
If Bitcoin is supposed to have mining for 50+ more years there is no way in hell human beings will be running mining farms by then. The whole industry will be automated, so we have to consider what that might mean right now. Personally I favor hybrid Proof of Work+Proof of Stake networks, as Total Proof of Work is not ideal.
I know these posts may make me unpopular or look like a lunatic but no one else is willing to post anything about the AI angle to POW. Demand for unlimited efficiency increases due to years of block reward having etc, put market forces on a certain evolutionary trajectory.
RE: In Defense of Consortium Blockchains