Or maybe the equilibrium is that no country bans it, and PoW currencies don't die on their own due to lack of financial rewards, and PoW artificially inflates the demand and therefore price of energy, leading first to widespread economic issues, then widespread ecological issues, until there is no one left buy pizza from with your BTC. Very compelling equilibrium.
An equilibrium doesn't entail that it's a sustainable point, or that it's actually providing value when you properly account for all externalities.
E.g. if Bitcoin had no block rewards, then the income from transaction fees alone might provide a more reasonable ceiling for miner activity. Users will only pay fees that make sense vs the utility they get.
However, for Bitcoin that's not the case right now. The combination of high price and block rewards provide an enormous subsidy for miner activity. (Some back of the envelope numbers elsewhere in this thread[1].)
And if Bitcoin gets banned, all PoW will likely get banned, so it doesn't matter if other PoW systems can behave better.
Don't get me wrong, I love the politics of decentralization. But it's worth remembering that decentralization tends to be a cost-center, not a profit-center, from the standpoint of efficiency and performance; and decentralized tech is no guarantee of decentralized results (see Amazon/Facebook/Google, who have quasi-monopolies in their niches, despite being delivered over open and federated web protocols).
