Here's is how I think about mining/pow in my mind.

Digitalisation frees us from the constraints of the physical realm, I can replicate digital information at will at no cost (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V). This is desirable because it makes us more productive.

When it comes to digital money however, this is not the case anymore, because, to have value, money has to be scarce.
So far, we always used trusted third parties to ensure this crucial property, but TTP have always broken our trust.

Bitcoin's PoW makes TTP obsolete by enforcing an objective and prohibitive cost to the trivial task of creating a digital asset, thus ensuring the digital asset remains scarce.