My thoughts:
I personally think that the number crunching, dividend arguments and theories on hash rate are less important then the long term potential of the Asicminer intellectual capital.
I see my share ownership as a stake in one of the first well funded start ups in a brand new economy! In my mind, owning shares in Asicminer is akin to being an early investor in Cisco, PayPal, Microsoft or Tesla.
The Entrepreneurs behind Asicminer has in my opinion already proven to be exceptionally trust worthy and intelligent. They seem to be passionate and very well equipped to become a major part in the quickly growing hardware and service economy that is quickly growing around bitcoin.
My personal wish for the pleasant problem of "bitcoin surplus" is for Asicminer to use these funds as a well funded venture capital firm would, investing in high risk/reward bitcoin related projects and services.
Why? Simply because I believe that their track record shows that they are far more likely to succeed in helping bring new software, hardware and Eco system services to market then possibly anyone else in the bitcoin economy.
Sure I love dividends as much as the next guy, but I value the bitcoin Eco system even more. And I believe that the way for Asicminer to best achieve exponential growth would be to use their unique position, knowledge, contacts and capital position to invest in growth rather then leaving it up to me to grow my funds.
But hey, that's just me.
As friedcat stated, if you want to invest in high risk whatever, you can do that with YOUR dividents on YOUR own risk. Why would everyone else have someone decide what with their earnings happens?
You can even reinvest your dividents into more shares.
And if you don't feel up to the responsibility of handling your own money, just send it to me
If you would have understood my post you would realize that I am not arguing that I am I'll equipped to "handle my own money" but rather that Friedcat, the group behind Asicminer etc. have know how, capital and connections that puts them in a unique position. A position that I believe no other entity in the bitcoin industry can challenge.
Why would I want to HAVE to micro manage investments when if I can let a group of more competent and well connected people provide the service for me with a higher chance of success?
Again, to me this is all about track record and trust. Sure, I could find investments, make phone calls, do research and invest myself. But if I had the choice of having Warren Buffet do it form me, I would probably be foolish not to let him..
In my opinion, letting share holders vote on "projects and investments" as motions would be a democratic and smart process for Asicminer to use.
Again, just my opinion.