They are making a deliberate trade-off decision token use for their own vs token use for the rest of the world. while Google is making the opposite bet

In order to correctly make that decision, they must use the opportunity cost of selling that token. I'm pushing back at OPs claim that Anthropic must use internal cost to calculate that trade-off. They absolutely should use external selling price.

Well, that's the other side of it. If we say they are making a trade-off decision, that means that they are choosing not to sell to paying customers. Who are these paying customers that Anthropic is turning down? I haven't heard any headlines saying they've instituted token quotas or started putting potential new customers on a waiting list.

Instead what's happening is more or less the opposite of that. They've been trying to goose demand by cutting prices: https://www.cio.com/article/4225643/openai-anthropic-cut-ai-...