1. If a miner was more profitable than the price payed, wouldn't the mining companies use them instead of selling them?
Doyou understand the meaning of ROI and the time it takes to get that? If you spend 100,000 dollars on a restaurant will you make 100,000 dollars the first day you are opened? No its called ROI. But if you spend 100,000 dollars on a restaurant and run your business well please your customers will you make 100,000 dollars profit in a year? Maybe. Mining Bitcoins is no different, except we dont have to please any customers to secure our business, we just have to buy a couple more machines every 2 weeks to compensate for the rise in the difficulty.
2. If a cloud miner was more profitable than the price payed, wouldn't the mining companies use them instead of renting them?
Again ROI brother ROI
3. Isn't it less risky to buy the coins upfront and not compete with the rising hashrate and diminishing returns?
I dont know ask a few of the idiots who bought into the hype when the coins were 1100 dollars a coin, where do you think they are sitting right now? Pretty far from profitable huh?
In my opinion, there is an influx of math-deficient kids and young adults spending money to buy miners in hopes of getting rich. This causes an influx of miners and less buying pressure on the actual market. In time, this influx should slow down as the general group will realize the futility of buying miners, and thus the price will begin to rise again.
Am I missing something as to the advantage of mining?
In my opinion, there is an influx of math-deficient, lack of business economics, lack of the bitcoin protocol and how it works, lack of currency trading logic and ROI understanding in your whole post. I think you need some more research on a few things before you start criticizing others on what you "think" is right and wrong
Sorry to be so blunt, Im Just saying