See, these people are not actually responsible for the current situation if you agree that miners are the predominant problem.Then there are people, which I think are a minority, who have elevated their spendings for PC Gaming since the beginning of the pandemic for two reasons: They spent more time inside, playing games and two, they were giving up at some point to get a card at MRSP. Or went on to buy a pre-built PC or a gaming notebook - those probably are larger volume markets than the DIY crowd anyway.
It may make surface sense to blame everybody, but it makes less sense once you consider the difference in situation and the actual demand it creates and the effect that has on pricing.
Gamers willing to pay these extreme prices are a small minority, as you seem to agree. So it stands to reason this isn't some inexhaustible market that's actually pushing the cap up.
Miners, on the other hand, cannot get enough GPU's. If Nvidia and AMD built enough GPU's to satisfy the entirety of the 'willing to pay $2500 for a 3080' gaming crowd, it wouldn't change anything. Because there is no end to the demand from miners and that is the real problem. Nvidia and AMD cannot make enough GPU's to satisfy them.
So in a situation where mining wasn't a thing, would gamers and supply issues cause higher prices than normal? Yes. But not to nearly the degree we're seeing now. That desperate 'willing to pay $2500 for a 3080' crowd would be such a small number of people overall that it wouldn't actually drive prices up because there's not enough of them. Prices would drop significantly in order to reach a broader 'willing to pay' point. It wouldn't be a great situation, but it would a lot more tolerable than now.
It is only miners that are causing things to be as extreme as they are. It makes no sense to blame a small minority of gamers also buying at these stupid prices.