Our money brains are fine tuned to egos and personalities, agree with your argument on what we should strive towards. Personally I think mining BCH when BTC is more profitable is bad.
bad as in dangerous? unethical? irrational? unseemly? brings bad luck?
/4 as a demonstration that a coin can and will be attacked if there is a will for it, miners choosing coins instead of choosing what is most profitable makes it into a power play. /end
but a miner might estimate that less revenue now is acceptable in exchange for keeping the BCH chain robust, in expectation of future stability and gain.
There are few actors that exclusively mine BCH, I think CoinGeek made a statement about only mining Bitcoin Cash, Calvin Ayre is very pro BCH, but it is not a economical choice.
The chain only needs profit oriented miners to be robust, the profit margins are razor thin with mining unless there is subsidies for electricity or machinery, the price set the hash.
indeed, only profit oriented miners survive, as nobody can burn money forever. but there are short term profits and there are long term profits.
/2 they send a signal that they are willing to mine for political or coin-partisan reasons, that demonstrates the willingness to pay a price for no monetary gain, which can be used /3
Bad as in undermining the profit-motive as a way to be confident that miners will not mine for political or strategic reasons. If someone mines BCH at a lower profit margin than BTC /1
