firstly MINERS are just ASIC's they just hash
they have no control of the transaction selection... dont confuse miners with pools
What feeds the miner? There is something that has to build the merkle root and the block headers. Whoever runs the ASIC has to make deliberate decisions to include or exclude transactions.
secondly there are pools that offer miner reimbursements as 0 fee but 100% reward. or X% fee 9X% reward whereby fee's are still negligable to miners becasue the cut the pool takes would offset any gains from fees so many miners dont pool hop depending on if a pool does or does not include transactions. most miners stick to a pool that has best luck of block solving no matter how many tx's are included, no matter if its high or low fee tx included.
Exactly. Miners hop to pools that provides the most profits. Pools are not charity, they do not give out money for free and there is always a catch if they are seemingly running it for free. That is also the naive approach, for which no one actually adopts. Luck does matter and miners can pool hop. The profitability is still attributed to the fees being paid out from the blocks, and there is no denying that. If they don't, please point out a pool that doesn't include the highest fees.
you will surprise yourself when you see that there is a lack of pool hopping happening when a pool low fee's or empty blocks. because most miners are not watching blockexplorers to check how many transactions are in a block. they just count block solves/wins and how many shares of that block reward they get
they care more about how many shares of a reward they get in regards to how many other asics are on the same pool and how many block solves are done by pool per hour.. they dont transaction fee count
They don't but the observation of a lower potential profit is far more obvious in the long run. It doesn't matter what an individual miner perceives. A rational miner always maximizes profit, and empty blocks or intentionally including lower fees isn't one of them. If that is, then pools would be actively doing it.
Concluding note: No free lunch in the world and each miner is paying for their services to provide them in the form of a mining pool. If you collect less fees, then you are receiving less profit, because your fees are pegged in the miner's revenue. Additionally, including low fee transactions or not including transactions doesn't affect stale rate to any noticeable extent.