That's exactly the problem. As someone who does not have access to 32 Eth, you need to trust a pool operator with your money.

This is a direct parallel of issues like home and car ownership. If you're not rich enough, you have to trust a 3rd party, and also get less for your money.

Vote with your money. There are plenty of other blockchains where this is not the case as delegation is part of the protocol.

You don't have to trust a third party. You can run a pool yourself and be the one who needs to be trusted.

If you don't have enough eth to stake, how will you persuade anyone to lend you their eth?

Have friends? People who trust you?

Obviously I need to have friends who already want to invest a significant amount into Eth, otherwise I'm just "that guy" shilling some scheme to their family and friends.

Of course. So what's the problem with that?

Under what possible scenario do I have a few k$ spare, but not 10k$ spare, to invest in a speculative asset, and also have a large number of friends and family already in exactly the same position?

The only one I can see would make me the "cryptobro", to use the currently-popular phrase.

It's also quite ironic that you suggest the basis of Eth consensus be based on the strength of inter-personal trust. If that's how it works, then why bother with the complexities of Eth?

I'm not saying the basis of ETH consensus is based on inter-personal trust. The conversation started by a complaint of 32 ETH required to run a validator being out of reach of normal people, so I provided multiple other options for how a normal person can take part in this.

You gave one suggestion, which was based on inter-personal trust. This removes a major benefit of taking part in the Ethereum ecosystem. If it became a widespread way for people to take part in Ethereum's staking mechanism then yes, Ethereum's consensus would effectively be based on interpersonal trust (which is something that the developers have gone to great pains to avoid).

I gave two suggestions - join a pool, and run a pool.

Both of which (essentially the same thing - "be in a pool") require trust, which destroys a key advantage of Ethereum (and cryptocurrencies in general).