While it’s true that you can’t buy Bitcoin (for example) unless someone else is selling, most people aren’t concerned about market liquidity for buyers due to whales being unwilling to sell. The permission to buy doesn’t seem hard to get?

Also, for the most part, people are happy when the price goes up, which is what happens when there are more buyers than sellers.

I guess in theory, money drops could distribute ownership more widely and that would be more equitable, but this sort of inequality (some people have a lot more Bitcoin than others) isn’t normally considered too much of a problem.

But if you’re going to take distributed governance seriously, neither proof-of-work nor proof-of-stake give ordinary people much of a say in how things go. In this way it’s similar to the stock market, where we’re told our votes are meaningful but in practice they aren’t unless you have a huge amount of shares. Participating in governance is usually an illusion and it’s not normally why you invest, unless you’re a corporate raider or something.

Similarly for mining. It’s done to make money.