If you started mining with ~10 HD5870's in 2011 and kept doing just that and you kept most of the BTC you are perfectly fine to spend your free money on these 60% chance scams.
But for the avarage joe like us we just can't spend 10K on something we don't even know if it wil ever come...
Yea this is basically how I feel. I mined with just a GPU back in the day and after a few weeks finally got 1 BTC, then I sold it when the price skyrocketed to 270 xD
Now I really just want some BTC for the vanity and to play some of those betting games, but don't really want to spend too much money on it as in a few months whatever hardware I buy will be outdated and close to useless
...
In the long run btc will only work if the miners make profit and if there are the Joes. So mining is an Option for you and me, but maybe not right now or not by directly cashing out. I am experimenting and being patient. The ASICS can go to lets say 14nm, but somewhere below there may a Limit. I can wait for 14nm USB block eruptor (3,3 GH/s, 1 Watt) buy some of these 2014 / 2015 and and see profit coming in. Bigger guys will have to pay taxes (25-42%) so this is there disadvantage. Havent heard yet that btc are accepted in Monaco, Bermudas or in Switzerland.
The only thing that will make bitcoin work is if people start to use it, hoarding just makes it a circle jerk. I'm not sure you understand the mining process, the better hardware is an irrelevance (unless you somehow have exclusive access). What matters is how many btc are available and what difficulty is being generated by everyone else doing exactly the same thing as you are. All this talk of "profit" just sounds wrong headed to me.