I've never been a miner myself, and I can't really say I understand mining economics. But I always thought, if I ever become a miner, I would mine XMR and AR.
Sure, it may not be lucrative... But hey - you can bet your head XMR would never fork to a PoS, so your mining business will have economic security in this regard (lol, no pun intended). Yeah, I guess regulations may lead to XMR delistings... but I don't think current delistings so far had any noticeably bad effect.
Same thing with AR. Basically, if I was a miner, I would like to have security for my business - to know that there won't be some DAO that decides to go PoS all of a sudden and basically force me to shift my whole business model. If I want the venture to be more lucrative, well, I guess I should increase my investment in it.
I may be confused and wrong, again - not a miner. But I'm not far from the idea of becoming a miner and that's how I would go about it I guess.