So try this perspective, if everyone gets the same % return does any one else get richer relative to another? Furthermore chains like cardano mean everyone is staking funds that are instantly spendable. And everyone can stake by delegation without running hardware. Spending any of the interest is effectively losing money in comparison to other hodlers. You could get rid of staking by requiring people transacting to do a proof of stake using the funds they are sending to process a transaction after it. That way you get rid of the money = more money issue.

Another thing is our current financial system spends more energy anyway, Mining gold spends more energy. As others have replied to the thread below switching to a CPU only algo would reduce consumption a lot because to miners profit is the only thing that matters to these ASIC buyers. But using general purpose hardware makes it so that spending more power to make more money has an exponential hardware investment curve disincentivizing it and distributing it more evenly. Which also improves price stability.

RandomX is the solution. Proof of Space Time and Proof of Capacity show promise and proof of stake is ideal after distribution is complete.