I agree but its not dead yet. ASICMINER is in it for the money. They do not care about bitcoin's future. Otherwise they should NOT be mining and just sell hardware. They could limit the amount of GHs per order so 1 person cant order several THs. This would at least slow down the centralization somewhat.
Bitcoin doesn't need ASICMiner to "care about Bitcoin's future". Can you imagine how horribly fragile (and ultimately doomed to failure) a system would be if it required all actors to be altruistic? Bitcoin just needs ASICMiner to be economically rational and as a for profit venture it is.
Spot on. ASICMiner responds to market conditions (specifically, the increasing hashrate which is an indicator of new hardware coming online) appropriately by aggressively pricing and delivering. Their price point is aggressive enough to entice people who are optimistic (or challenged at math) to purchase their hardware.
However, their main source of income from their documents is by far their mining operations. From a business perspective it means that they are making a killing off of their hardware sales even at their current relatively competitive pricing, since their mining operations are far more profitable using the same hardware.
Their primary responsibility as a corporation is to maximize shareholder value, not to be altruistic to the Bitcoin economy. And they have done an exceptional job for the shareholders.
