If mining is futile, why so many group buys?

[mchu168]

Why on earth are there so many group buys for mining gear when the consensus is that mining will never be profitable?

For me, I bought a bunch of erupters and blue fury's just for fun - to be in the game.  I'm hoping the difficulty increases moderate so I can mine profitably for as long as possible, but I'm doubtful i will ever be anywhere close to break even.  Best case, I make some bitcoin and BTC/USD appreciates significantly so that I can use my mined bitcoins to buy the next greatest ASIC miner and keep mining and buy the next miner, etc until I run out of bitcoins - maybe like a perpetual motion machine, ideally.

Why do you guys mine?

[odolvlobo]

Why on earth are there so many group buys for mining gear when the consensus is that mining will never be profitable?

There are three reasons:

1. People just assume that they are going to make tons of money by mining, and they don't even bother to determine how much the equipment will mine.
2. The consensus is wrong. A lot of ignorant people are included in the consensus (see #1).
3. Miners want you to think that mining will never be profitable because less competition makes their mining more profitable.