2. Your breakeven point is around 200 days and not return on investment because you do not have any underlying value with the contract (unless it is a gawmining hashlet that you can resell). With a machine your return on investment is helped somewhat by owning the machine at the end of the mining period.
8. This is why it is very important to lenders and borrowers to be sure of their strategy and hopefully move more to having physical miners that can pay for themselves before they are totally obsolete.
I agree with some of your points, but I think others are less valid. In particular 2 - owning the machine is of virtually zero benefit in my view. The rate of improvement in technology means that your machine is so quickly redundant that it has no salvage value by the time you have been using it for a short period. This is supported by your point 3 too.
Also, this is definitely not a zero sum game. Cloud mining service providers AND investors can win if the bitcoin price is high enough relative to input costs. A zero sum game is one where the net effect is that no none wins, certainty not true here.
The truth with mining at current prices and with the massive investment from so many is that the little guy will struggle from here. You need massive scale to make this work so that your costs relative to mining power are as small as humanly possible. The investors who put $20m into BitFury know this.