Comment by NiloCK

Of course there is: competition with other labs, and self-hosting of open-weight models!

Yes, the mechanics are straightforward if Anthropic (or Claude, if you want to ascribe the decision there) decides to burn a pile of your money. But the strategy fails basic game-theory of repeated games - you'll simply stop playing.

(this isn't to say it invalidates the incentive to inflate token count, but it overcomes in terms of weighing options and making long-term profit decisions.)