You forget that the future prices may reflect a reason for mining at a loss at the current time. Not all markets remain static and thus they fluctuate. I suspect you will see a fluctuation in the price of namecoins to one bitcoin.
Don't be too sure that anyone is giving away processing power. Those who mine namecoins are holding them for a reason. Same with bitcoin.
Also keep in mind...that early on in bitcoin the pioneers who mined not ALWAYS mined at a profit. They saw the big picture and not just 4 feet in front of their faces.
No, the people mining namecoins simply can't do math. If they had mined bitcoins instead and bought namecoins one of two things will have happened: they'd have wound up with MORE namecoins (30-40% more) or the price of namecoins would have reached difficulty parity with BTC. I suspect a combination of the two. Oh, and more people would be mining NMC because of that price parity, so NMC isn't stuck in 1-2 transaction an hour hell for over a month.
Early bitcoin pioneers didn't have the option to mine "bonuscoins" which easily converted to the exact same bitcoins but with 30-40% more output. If they had you can bet the clever ones would have mined those instead.
You seem to confuse "going long namecoins" with "mining namecoins." The second is a way to accomplish the first, but with a massive penalty.
Your perspective is still focused on the short term. Did bitcoins value go from $0.00001 to $32 in less than a month? No. So you're comment about it been on a downward trend for a month isn't any different than bitcoins not gaining in market value for more than a month.
You keep saying things like "massive penalty" when you can't forecast the price of bitcoins nor namecoins for that matter. For all we know bitcoins could take a shit-dive to $7 for a month then in the meantime give namecoins a month's worth of high times.
Like I said also, Satoshi and the pioneers did take losses in the beginning prior to the recent run up in price in the last 9 months. So how is it a surprise that early adopters of namecoin are taking a loss in the short-term same as Satoshi?
Obviously you're more like a day trader. Make your $1 spend it and then in 6 months realize if you saved that $1 you would have had $1000.
Come back and talk to me in 6 months and we'll see who was short-sighted on the matter.