The general sentiment here seems (to me, anyway) to be that photography is one of those things that many people _are_ going to do anyway, which is why it's very difficult to be highly paid for it.

If so many people are willing to do something for free, is it really fair to vilify someone for inquiring as to whether you are one of those people?

For the most part, yes.

In general, my doing something that I want to do for free is different (usually) from you asking me to do a job that you want done for free.

Now, of course, there can be exchanges that don't involve money changing hands. Perhaps part of the deal is that I get into a concert (or whatever) for free and that may be perfectly reasonable. I do attend events on media passes on the (implicit) condition I'll publish a story about some aspect of the event.

"You can die from exposure, you know."

Do you _really_ think your photography job deserves the same hourly wage as an engineer or manager?

What quality freelance developer or manager in the US takes 4 hour jobs for even close to $25 per hour, in a customer choosen location?

I think his gist is that, of course a developer should expect to be paid more than that because they're special. But photographers just click pictures so they should be grateful to make anything at all.

There's a little more to being a photographer than clicking a button, but it might not look like that from the outside. It's like calling basketball "just tossing a ball around".

Programming is just glorified copy and paste, so it has more in common with photography than you think.