ASICBOOST causes Bitcoin's PoW to become more memory/latency throttled instead of raw computation throttled.

There is the equation:

Power Cost + Captial Rent + Labor ~= block reward + fees

Capital Rent is a barrier to entry, and hence in desiring a more distributed system, we would like to minimize the Capital Rent portion of the equation.

Resolving memory/latency throttle requires a greater Captial Rent than raw computation throttle.

Hence (agreeing with Luke), ASICBOOST is not desirable, even if it wasn't a government enforced monopoly on mining.

Please let me know if I made a mistake.

Thanks,

Praxeology Guy