Again, re-framing it to competitive arcade game, giving extra lives might not be the help that is needed by the player (I have yet to encounter a competitive arcade game that is not fair), but where I find some popular competitive game egregious is that they do not only give advantage to people that spend time in the game (via xp style leveling or some kind of in game currency) but also give more competitive advantage to those who pay ( see world of tanks with premium ammunition ).

Your argument is however valid for single/cooperative arcade games, where the design is to gobble as many coin as possible.