The "donations" go directly back to them through some big miners, they play the arbitrage of dumb gullible money
Discussion
This is what they are going for.
From this they craft narratives for more fud, it's an attack in the most disingenious way possible. They know exactly what they are doing and laughing their ass'es off. 
Is it an economical use of hard money?
If the answer is no, then it can't survive in perpetuity. In a truly free market based on hard money, only economically sound activity survives long term. They are attacking themselves.
Of course you are right, this does not change the fact that rare sats DO NOT EXIST.
It's all based on lies from bottom to the top, essentially like communism. It's the same metaphysical concept where everyone has to lie and gaslight each other at all times to keep the scheme running.
Otherwise it would collapse.
It's a nightmare for privacy aswell, but be vary that your proposed theory is valid on a soundmoney standard only which we are not on.
I'm not disagreeing that it's a scam or dumb. I'm just saying it doesn't scare me or concern me. Bitcoin is much more resilient than some degenerate behavior. Hard money fixes this. This behavior would only be a threat if bitcoin wasn't hard money.
It does not scare or concern me either, I'm just absolutely disgusted by it.
Imagine all that time spent on education of austrian economics instead
It's our duty to plug in ASICs and collect the scammer sats when and where we can while sweeping to cold storage. Play fiat well enough to survive and pass our stacks on to our children. Then we steward the money into a bright orange future.
Legend. I completely agree, they can only waste so much bitcoin before they fade into irrelevance.
Ah ok, I gotcha. Totally on the same page. Big agree