Sure, but if you're paying anywhere near list price for your on-prem hardware at scale you're also doing it wrong. I've never seen a scenario where Amazon discounts exceed what you would get from a hardware or software vendor at the same scale.

Interesting how cloud services are sold like used cars.

It's more interesting how cloud services are sold like any other consumables or corporate services.

No one runs their own electricity supply (well until recently with renewables/storage), they buy it as a service, up to a pretty high scale before it becomes more economic to invest the capex and opex to run your own.