There are other ways to get a "higher fraction of the output" that do not involve contributing to the input. That is the point you are missing.
You are treating this is a some function of fundamental physics. It's not. We are only talking about "conversion of energy into money" because that is what the best current implementation of a BFT system is using.
It's accidental. You are focused on the "Work" part of "Proof-of-Work", when what we care about for solving consensus in distributed part is the "Proof".
Yes, that's my point isn't it? I said "Bitcoin's proof of work is basically a conversion of energy directly into money." I did not say "all systems for ensuring the soundness of proofs in blockchains are a conversion of energy directly into money."
What we care about is trust minimization. It just happens that the first system utilized, proof-of-work, provides the best-yet incentives for ensuring trust minimization, and the most equitable distribution of coin. It being accidental does not mean it is not the the best method for securing "proof." (Which isn't to say that it is necessarily the best of all possible methods, only that the simple fact of it being first and accidental does not negate that it may be.)
And the costs of achieving those.
> provides the best-yet incentives
At an ever-growing prohibitive cost.
> most equitable distribution of coin.
Hardly true when you have more than 50% of the hashing power coming from farms ran in China on subsidized power and not paying for externalities.
By equitable distribution, I mean that mining is on average only marginally profitable; the bulk of mined coin needs to be sold on the open market, which means there is always liquidity and availability to those seeking to enter or exit.
Hashing power centralization and coin distribution are different topics. Decentralization of hashing power will continue to increase as the renewable energy costs continue to lower, because they will eventually match and then lower beneath the subsidized rates currently available only in specific jurisdictions. Costs will shift to initial capital investment rather than energy supply.
No, you have it backwards. A BTC that is already mined has as much value as a BTC that is yet to be mined, whether now or twenty years in the future.
Again, the fact that we spend energy to get more BTC is just accidental. There is no absolute law that postulates that the cost of energy and price of the asset need to be correlated.
> Decentralization of hashing power will continue to increase as the renewable energy costs continue to lower.
You are talking about spherical cows, I am talking about actual implementation of the system. Renewable energy costs mean jack shit when you have big central entities subsidizing dirty energy and if no one pays for the externalities. Also, it doesn't matter how "clean" a source of energy is. Unless you find a way to break the law of thermodynamics, the best way to be sustainable is to not consume the energy in the first place.
There are already plenty of market incentives for us to be more efficient and produce energy, we don't need to have an artificial component added to this system for it to work.
The problem is arguing a correlation between computation and work for price of BTC and/or cost of energy. That is the mistake from OP.
This doesn't negate what I'm trying to say. That the energy amount is variable but the currency units output on the other side are static doesn't change the fact that energy is being turned into money. By contributing a higher fraction of the input, you get a higher fraction of the output.
If anything, higher energy input can only be justified when the money being made as a result has an equivalent value or purchasing power. You're confusing units of currency for the actual purchasing power they represent, which actually is variable.
> no one wants money, what people want is the what money can buy
This is wrong. People want the option to have things in the future, which is exactly what money is.