I get it that they need to find a way to fund their R&D team.
I get that there is also some people willing to pay top-dollar for some specific features which can not be had on commodity phones Linux-based, fully assembled in the US, etc. Which is going to be impossible to fulfill at scale.
What I don’t get is: why can’t they offer something that makes this explicit? I for one have no interest in a $2k phone, but I would gladly give them $50 per month and in exchange I’d get the right to participate in some periodic (monthly, quarterly, yearly?) dutch-style auction when they had a new update to their phone. Perhaps a percentage of the money that I had given could be used to pay for the device, etc.