You're taking the car thing too far, I'm just giving examples here. Doesn't matter if it's physical goods or pixels, you're spending money on something you like/want, which others think is pointless, stupid, and a waste of money.
My buddy burned through $4500 in Vegas over 2 days, he doesn't have a thing to show for it, wait, but at least he had fun doing it, and so do people that pilot internet spaceships. But, you'll never see those spaceships, yes, we will, we can fly quite a few of the single seaters now, and in November we'll be able to fly some of the multicrew ships in a small version of the persistent universe, probably about the size of our current solar system, and that "baby" PU is going to get content and ships added as their ready, missions, random encounters, pvp with other player ships, mining, then other systems will be added, accessed by jump points, as they are ready.
When it's finally in a state that is acceptable for the general public, and Creston, it will go live. But, Chris Roberts is stealing your monies, not spending every cent of it on the game, so what, you've just described every other for profit company out there, this is the intention, to ultimately turn a profit and continuously add content, just like all the other game companies. How long has CR been out of the business of making pc games, a little while, he's getting his wings back and starting to pick up the pace, if he decides something isn't good enough and says to redo it, then redo it, or quit and whine about how you feel insulted that you boss told you to redo something. This project is his baby, so yea, he's gonna be picky about it, he wants to make something great, and if he makes a little money along the way, well, that's just terrible, who would do such a thing. Maybe you should get a game company started and try your hand at making something on a scale that hasn't been done before, I bet you'd never run into a single problem along the way, because you've read gaming news for years, and you know exactly what to do.
Where the hell are you guys getting 4 years from, the demo shown for the kickstarter was done by Crytek employees in their spare time as a way to get CR to choose their engine. Other than that, nothing, I repeat, no progress had been made whatsoever at the start of this campaign other than a demo made by Crytek employees, possibly using a model designed by Chris's friend/designer. There were a handful of employees during the kickstarter, there was by no means a full fledged design team with a complete working engine ready to dive in at the end of the kickstarter.
So lets do the math here and go over the facts, the kickstarter is wildly successful, far more than they imagined it would be, should they stop and keep the scale small, hell no, keep it going and lets go for the moon. Scrambling to keep the momentum going, stretch goals/features are added as the millions tick away, the realization sets in that there's a real possibility here to make something on a scale nobody has seen, shit, we gotta start hiring people. There are still positions open that need filled, today, almost 3 "not 4" years later. In that 3 years multiple offices were setup in different cities and countries, a team was assembled and put together on the fly, a team that hadn't worked together before, and they need to start churning out content and a solid netcode that is a step above anything out there. So in that 3 years of assebling a fresh team and designing a game they've got Arena Commander out "and it looks awesome, yet it's not done", the FPS coming in October, the multicrew ships and the baby PU in November, Squadron 42 sometime next year "we'll learn more Friday". I'd say that's a pretty damn good job considering what I just told you. But I won't convince you, not even a little bit, because you're so wound up with misinformation and bs that you're snowball is already halfway downhill, and now there's no stopping it or you might look stupid.
So talk trash, spread lies and misinformation, and SC will keep rolling in the money, because people do their research and make up their own mind, and CIG will keep making their game, it may have more delays, most of us don't care, we get what we've always wanted in a spaceship game, the rest doesn't matter.