You confuse me when you ask why PoS would help a coin's economy though. PoS/PoW/Premine/etc. have nothing to do with the economy; they have to do with security. Bitcoin has a high enough hash rate behind it that the security really isn't an issue (unless a government decided to crash it). KARMA, on the other hand, could benefit from the security, since it's more vulnerable. But this has nothing to do with the economy and it has nothing to do with the price. You can have the most secure coin ever and it have 0 value, or you can have the least secure one and it be worth billions.
when you talk about security it is important to note that the only tried and tested technology is the PoW system implemented by Bitcoin..
every other system has not been around long enough... even exotic technological advancements in the PoW camp like X11, KGW, Digishield, Dark Send etc are not tried and tested over a long period of time so nobody knows for certain how successful or secure they will be.. We are all relying on theories of some very eccentric super braniacs to tell us what is secure and what isn't..
as far as PoS is concerned it has been around since Aug 2012 but even more recently in its 100% PoS form. PoS may or may not be more secure than PoW depending on how it is implemented. It has its own problems like the "Nothing at stake" attack and the hoarding/coin centralization problems.
An example of the coin centralization problem in PoS (ie too many coins in too few hands) can be seen quite clearly when you look at what happened to Ripples lab where the coin XRP has Dropped in value from a Market cap high of 600 Million down to 30 million.. that's a staggering 95% loss in value. now you can ask how did this happen.. well its quite simple.. when there aren't enough coins in circulation and most of them are controlled by a few people then its becomes iliquid and the price is artificially high. So much so that when just 1 or two people decide to leave the economy it collapses.
An example of this happening in the PoW camp.. is when Mt Gox shut down.. Another example of a PoW coin with too much centralizaion which could be artificially inflated is DRK (only time will tell)
Ultimately when it comes down to how successful coins are, as you have already stated, PoW vs PoS is quite irrelevant. I would argue that security wise, it is also not relevant because you are comparing apples to oranges.. swapping one problem with another.
if we look at the top coins by Market cap.. the entire Cryptocoin market is about 8.1 billion dollars. 7.9 billion of that is made up of just 2 PoW coins. compared that to the top 3 PoS enabled coins Ripple, PPC (PoW PoS hybrid) and NXT which make up for only 120 Million dollars in market cap.
Even without Bitcoin the top 3 PoW enabled coins still far outweigh the top 3 PoS coins in terms of market cap by an order of magnitude.
When we look at making fundamental changes to how our coin works (changes which could affect all of us if something goes wrong) we need to look at it from all angles.. not just which one is theoretically more "advanced" or theoretically more "secure".
In my view the biggest problem by far facing Karma is its excessively large coin supply and the centralization of the coins into a few early adopters hands.. this is why it is vitally important that we do not do anything to encourage further hoarding or increase rate of coin creation.
Karma coin supply is currently 53,752,974,065 KARM and will Max out at 92 billion over its lifetime.. (most of that being mined this year)
If today Karma switched to a PoS with 10% interest per annum we would reach 95 billion coins by 2020 and by 2025 we would have 153 billion coins in circulation and by 2030 that number would rise to a staggering 247 billion coins.
This means that any switch to PoS will require an interest rate much less than that (probably closer to 2% per annum matching the target inflation rate that the US and EU)
now with an Interest rate of around 2% per annum .. the argument that people make that PoS will stop the dumping and encourage people to invest in Karma simply evaporates. In Crypto-land where speculation is rife and people are expecting ridiculously high returns, even 10% per year would still not be enough to encourage people to hold Karma and 10% per year would all but destroy Karma in the long run.
so in summary it is my firm view that any switch to PoS would not resolve the biggest challenges that Karma faces and that is why I don't support the PoS change proposal.
