I think the point is more that whatever tech you use, you eventually still have to trust humans or an organisation.

There are always inherent risks that you just can't reduce with tech.

Yeah but if I can trust them in 10 seconds with very little effort on my part, I can be much more nimble with my strategy. If i can quickly verify the validity and source of primary data, I can make decisions on that data without hesitation. The value is in automating the trust, having a tiny little notary saying yes this is true, go ahead and make evidenced based decisions. Now of course we could do this with other tech, but I find the standardization of this trust mechanism to be the substructure of new business building tools and services around this quick trust, much faster than they can build them around trust accumulated by institutions, governments, notable individuals.

I've not seen any satisfactory explanation for how a working PoS system would operate. Granted I'm not an expert, but anytime I delve into whitepapers, they are written confusingly and without crucial details, which makes me wonder if some of these alternate chains are just vaporware or at the very least a lot less than they promise.

Are there any good examples of working PoS?

Tezos