I've definitely shared this concept or observation or whatever you want to call it before, but recent events have made me think of it again. I should clarify first that what I base this train of thought on isn't entirely something that clicks for me, something I might not get into expressing, but it definitely makes you or at least me wonder why the implications in the train of thought aren't considered, at least outside my occupation (since I'm in an occupation designed to work around the otherwise neglect of the concept), and I thought of running this by.
Back in the old days, it was common for business people to pay their workers more honestly, as in based on what they thought the worker seemed to deserve. Often the workers would seem underwhelmed. Organized criminals would then step in and say "you'll get more out of us" and so that part of society grew. For some reason, the first thing within the mind of the people in charge, trying to assess everything, was "let's invent this thing, we might call it the minimum wage". Alrighty. So this side thinking, what do we think of it? Something happened, right?
So here is where the train of thought works into the picture. Matters of monetization are just one arena up the sleeve of bad actors. A lot of people feel abruptly socially isolated. When this happens, instinct is often to seek out companions. Social life might be dead or people might be avoidant. Someone I know is in such a situation. Along comes what might be called a bad actor. To them, they might see a potential extension of themselves with freedom of minimal effort. And voila, someone new joins the "bad crowd" or "dysfunctional crowd".
Watching this unfold myself, I think to myself. Places have a "minimum reference point" for the topic of exchange/payment/whatever the word is, so then what does the non-thinking come from to apply this thought to the whole isolation thing mentioned? Anyone here have people they know who were absorbed into a bad part of society when everything seemed dead and thought "well, it's not like anyone else was going to give them what they need"?
I thought at least the discussion could be considered a good exercise. But everyone frets the small stuff :(
The big issue, is you haven't given us anything concrete to discuss.
Every single question in this post is just trying to get you to give a concrete example so we can talk about it.
Having read all of this a few times and thinking about each thing being talked about, there is one thing that comes to my mind: discounts
I remember when I was little, there were certain places like the movie theater or certain venues that have a "partnership discount system". They would treat groups of people with under a certain number of people as a singular individual, more or less, or favorably in certain aspects. They'd make the whole experience this way. If you showed up with a friend, you'd get more out of the experience than if you showed up on your own. Probably how the occupation/client aspect mentioned would work. So there are small social engineering tricks I'm sure which can combine in a contrived way to make a system that entices the middle of Maslow's needs to be fulfilled.
Something like that in of itself just requires privately enforced discretion.