You hit the nail on the head with the whole human resistance to change part. That's exactly what it is. Proof of work is a beautiful technology, but the problem lies in greed. People want more and bigger and more and bigger, lol, and that's why we have this institutional centralization in bitcoin mining (as well as other chains). There are still those like Monero that stay ASIC resistant so that the every day person can mine with a CPU. Those are the chains I like to support. Hell, I have a Monero mining machine sitting on the work bench in pieces I need to build. But the issue with these are with the concentration of hashrate in mining pools. The power that people have here is decentralizing their hashrate, but then again, there is the greed factor. They want to keep getting the most for their hashrate, which ends up being with the biggest pools. But the decision can be made to solo mine, whereas with proof of stake, there is none of that.
So really there your problem is right there: GREED and LAZINESS... People want the easy way out of everything, that's why the ETFs, treasury stocks, and mining stocks are blowing up right now. It's an easy way to be exposed to crypto and not have to do the work. With that, the problem is that blackholes like Blackrock are taking control more and more.