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Those are actually producing something useful. Bitcoin miners only produce highly volatile virtual currency which no serious business would want to rely on. Selling them to speculants for a stable currency is logical.

If you find no value in a distributed zero trust public ledger you probably are not appreciating enough the internet.

That's the wrong question to retort with. ASICs have no other use than to mine Bitcoins, unlike solar panels, etc, etc.

The answer is obviously to raise capital to so they can make more money faster.

And as a hedge against a BTC price crash, or a huge jump in mining difficulty, or etc. If you're doing nothing but mining then you've got all your eggs in one basket.

Solar panels / farm tractors / metal lathes do not print money directly like these devices do.

Compared to equipment that produce physical things, mining Bitcoin takes zero skill and labor. It's literally as easy as plugging it in.

However that is starting to change (see ASICminer's facility)