I merited your post because it does contain some very valid points of which I disagree with some, you turn your miners off once your power bill is higher than your profit in fiat, or else, if you pay 100$ to mine 50$ worth of bitcoin it really makes no sense.

While I do agree that mining IS indeed a form of business, it isn't exactly similar to running a shop or anything like that, mining depends entirely on the price of bitcoin in respect to the mining difficulty, there is exactly nothing you can do about it when it isn't profitable, you can market your goods, you can't spend money on ads in hope to generate more profit, you can't hire a better employee to increase your sales or anything you can potentially do with any traditional business.

The other point missing here is that running a business has a long term potential, even while operating at a loss you are building yourself a name/brand, experience, securing good employees, making loyal clients, it's okay to operate at a loss for as long as you can afford it because it could very well pay off in the long run, mining is more like a hit-and-run if you may, you are limited by the short lifespan of your mining gears and how long they can remain profitable, once you have to run them at a loss it's simply a game over.

I don't entirely disagree with you and phill here, but the idea is that investing in mining and investing in bitcoin can't be separated. so if you invest in BTC mining then you are betting on its value to increase, anyone who is certain that the value of bitcoin is going down will not touch mining with a wooden pile, and since both buying BTC and mining BTC depend on the evaluation of BTC the two things are closely related and IF the money you spend on mining gears doesn't give you back more BTC than you could buy, it's certainly a losing business.