I don't think that's an adequate comparison to what they are selling. If I rent a car and stop paying for it, if I were to say "I expect them to leave me with

I don't think that's an adequate comparison to what they are selling. If I rent a car and stop paying for it, if I were to say "I expect them to leave me with the car I rented and just not provide a replacement when it needs to be replaced" people would look at me like I was trolling. The nature of renting a car, and the prices involved in renting vs buying are great enough that people understand the market. With ink, they are doing something similar. You aren't paying $1/month (their lowest tier plan) to buy a cartridge of ink until it runs out. That pricing would be unreasonable compared to the current market price of ink (regardless of what that market price should be if we had better competition). Anyone thinking they found a hack to get HP to give them ink cartridges for $1 is like my example thinking I found a slightly used 2022 car for $500 because I can rent it and then stop paying and get to keep the car. In this specific case, they aren't taking the ink back, not worth it, and instead creating waste by disabling it. We could say there market shouldn't exist and outlaw it to reduce waste, but that's a different argument than to argue they are selling you a cartridge of ink (technically 2+ for black and color) for $1.