Asic miners have much lower running costs (electricity), they can afford to sell at these prices (with a profit).
Asic startup costs (just like GPU's) are sunk costs. In the short term decision making, only variable costs (electricity) as opposed to integral costs are considered.
No matter the terminology you use, facts are facts, words need to be used correctly and with everything in consideration. The fact electricity is a variable cost means very little. One of the only use of determining variable cost is profit optimization. But there is so much more than that to the matter. The arms race effect trumps a lot of stuff here.