My interpretation was by far the most generous to your position, because it’s the only way it’s coherent.

You’re entitled to your opinion, I guess.

hardware that doesn’t actually provide anything anyone can realistically use

Thats misrepresenting reality and making assumptions while clearly showing lack of expertise

at a reasonable price

Thats completely arbitrary. If a price is reasonable or not depends on many factors. Obvious oversymplification.

That’s treating a current purchase as an imaginary investment in maybe eventually being able to buy something useful.

This shows that you have no idea what you are talking about. Small companies and open source projects depend on people buying their products instead of cheaper, sometimes better performing products of big conglomerates for other reasons than price alone.