The word is "exploitive". Desperate people will do things because they have to. If I pay a homeless person $20 to humiliate himself, is that a fair transaction, or an exploitation of the asymmetry between our conditions?

To the chubby engineer type in 2019, yes. Make the drunk dwarf dance, it’s a free market.

When recession strikes and the gravy train ends, the same folks will be wearing Che Guevara T-shirts crying about unfairness.

There is no obligation for anyone to do anything. Do you assume that there is no free will and we are all like robots driven by short term profits?

That doesn't answer the parent's question.

If you call 20$, for a person who owes nothing and is probably starving, a "short term profit", you've very likely never experienced how is it to live in poor conditions.

It is very possible to "improve" somebody's life and still be abusing your power over them and causing them damage in other ways.

> Sounds like $30k is an improvement in their lives then, so is it really "too little"?

Being put in prison is an improvement for many individuals in so far as they are guaranteed three square meals and a warm place to lay their head. Would you seriously argue that that's an improvement that is worth the cost to the individual?

yes.