Because right now GPU mining is very profitable even with an old Radeon 7850 GPU which you can get dirt cheap on the second hand market. I am not asking him to go out and buy a bunch of Vegas.
There is no risk, since he can most likely resell that 7850 for the same price he paid for, unless it breakes which is unlikely.
You are still comparing making a speculative investment looking for a return to being given free money. I said it was worthwhile doing it because it is free money.
Doing that is much much easier than doing these pointless faucets for scraps of BTC.
These pointless scraps have added up to 0.36
BTC for me which means I now have $6,000 more worth of Bitcoin than I would if 4 years ago I had listened to the people saying exactly what you are saying now.
I also did mining, trading and investing which I have made more from. That doesn't change that my bottom line is $6,000 better because of freebitco.in