Time for someone to step up and defend ASICMINER here, I guess it will be me.
First of all, friedcat has been an outstandingly honest and upright member of this community for a long time, and the interests of ASICMINER are clearly aligned with most of this community. Greater network hash rate contributes to the security of Bitcoin and is good for all users - possibly with the exception of competing miners and hardware manufacturers. The transparency of their operation, such as signing each block they find, clearly demonstrates their good intentions.
Secondly, ASICMINER's pricing policy has been pertinent: ASICMINER has an obligation to maximize value for shareholders, and selling hardware below what the market is willing to pay does not achieve this. If they set a lower price point, they would only achieve being sold out quicker and the lucky few who managed to buy would simply sell their hardware on eBay at twice the price. That would hardly be a responsible way to run a company. ASICMINER has no obligation to sell hardware at charity prices so miners can net a big profit quickly - in that case they would be better off mining with their own hardware.
Thirdly, developing your own mining hardware and subsequently mining with it is not "evil". ASICMINER is a clever bunch, but they have used no unfair business tactics to achieve their current advantage and there is no reason any other sufficiently talented group of people could not compete on equal terms.
Fourthly, ASICMINER is clearly aware of the dangers of having too large share of the network hashing power and sell hardware in great enough quantities to avoid the possibility [although not at charity prices].
I have more points too, but that should be a start.
Disclaimer: I have a horse in this race, and I have a man-crush on friedcat and ASICMINER.
How does 1 person/company controlling the entire network secure the network? Even at 30-40%, if he wanted to he could cripple everything by forcing short lived forks.
You seem to think he keeps 20% hash rate and sells the rest of the hardware. WRONG. He only ever sold hardware because he had difficulties powering and cooling such extreme amounts. He has sold what... 500 blades? 5TH.
Look at May when he started selling. He had 20TH deployed, struggling for heat and power. Once sorted by the end of May, he has nearly 50TH and 35% of the market. Do you think he will stop there? Of course he won't - his previous estimates were to deploy 60TH by the end of July for that generation.
And now his new generation, arriving in the next 7-14 days.... As he said himself, he's going to put 10-15x that amount down in the next 6 months.