What i'm pointing to is *pre-orders break the feedback loop*.  The miners that will be coming online in the predictable future are already bought & paid for.  There is no feedback loop involved -- no governor, the buyers are locked in.  All the way into next year.  The only choice is unloading the gear to a greater fool, or mining as long as possible to recoup some of the wasted money.  The difficulty will keep going up as more pre-orders are built & put online.
Something like that.

I do agree though that with KNCMiner you *are* locked in.  You can't sell your place in line because a) you don't know it and b) it's not clear that being first in line will result in receiving your order significantly earlier than anyone else.

Small Update
8/30/2013 2:01:00 PM
Ok so a few of announcements;

Firstly, let us address the small competition KnCMiner held on Bitcointalk.org to create the phrase chosen to populate all our boards;

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/170332.msg3019140#msg3019140

The entries were brilliant, there were some genuine laugh out loud choices, as well as a variety of creative mash-ups with reference to space and Bitcoin mining. We did take note of entries within our main thread, as well as the thread dwdoc started, and the later thread included in the ‘Newbie’ section started by happyagnostic. So we promise, no one was overlooked. Whilst there were several honourable mentions, including;

Commanderuk – Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

600watt – Mine the Gap.

Kaerf – “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks”

The joint – where zeros and ones become heroes and fun.

The Avenger – “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality” – John Lennon

BigLad – Uranus is next… (not really but that got a superb reaction)

There was however one clear winner, and whilst a lot of consideration has been given into stating what that is, we’re in two minds about revealing it until the boards are in our hands. So we would like to tease you a little further about what that maybe, but in all honesty we all agreed upon the choice as soon as we saw it.

We have sent the member a private message, and have just sent him the final design for his approval. He has agreed to keep quiet, until such point as he is welcome to claim total credit.

KnCMiner do have boards in our possession to use in the meantime for testing purposes, so having the controller boards printed with the phrase will not delay us in any way, but that design has now been optimised, The order has now been placed and we are very happy with the result.

Secondly with regards to CGminer, and it’s opensource protocol we’ve been able to configure our device unassisted and made a greater than 30% performance increase using the underlying code, for which we would like to thank both kano and ckolivas with their outstanding contribution to the community.

Next we wish to address the concerns surrounding why we have suggested power supplies capable of overcompensating for our promised maximum power consumption = 1.6 W/GH/s. Again, the answer lies within our motto of under-promising, and over-delivering, but this time we wish to extend the margins to yourselves and ensue you have enough power to allow for the additional hashrate our devices are certain to supply.

Finally we wish to confirm that yes we are still on track for our delivery towards the end of September.

Thanks,

KnCMiner Team.

www.kncminer.com

but that design has now been optimised

And what do you buy bitcoins with?

He's right. The initial cost is in flat not BTC which you've had to buy or obtain in some way that cost you flat.
I could just as easily say that I could make more trading BTC with leverage, or trading gold....but that's not the point, nor the topic of this thread...it's about KnC Miners and mining.

Yup, that is true, there is a delay between paying and beginning to mine.  However, there has been a market for people selling their pre-order place in line so that should mitigate the effect you describe.  They weren't locked in.

I do agree though that with KNCMiner you *are* locked in.  You can't sell your place in line because a) you don't know it and b) it's not clear that being first in line will result in receiving your order significantly earlier than anyone else.  That's a big mistake on KNC's part, IMO.

That's one thing BFL did right - they at least allowed a secondary market to exist.

Buying & selling of pre-orders can't extinguish *any* of the hashrate that will go online once those pre-orders ship.
Once the pre-orders are placed, the hashrate *is* locked in.
Once X(MH/s) are pre-ordered, the hash rate can only increase, never decrease.  The only exceptions are refunds (though if the gear exists, it will be mined), and electricity costs making mining unprofitable for certain miners (unlikely in near-term).

My point is trivial -- there exists a plausible scenario where *all* the miners who have pre-ordered their gear will be mining at a loss.  This scenario is made more probable by the pre-order schemes and the constant influx of new ASIC manufacturers.