Interesting point, but when your completion and tons of other pilots are willing to do the same job for free, near free, or even pay for a job, how can you set the bar really high?
-you- can't. A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. But to be more specific, I don't see delineation (or even a grey area) between "I'm working for a ridiculously low wage" and "I'm taking no direct monetary compensation for my time, merely hours." Both of them hinge on the concept that the individual probably couldn't get a job if they held out for more money, and therefore both of them "lower the bar", as the phrase goes.
Aviation is a little strange in that it's something that, at present, has a saturated market and a very high bar to entry for the (dwindling set of) jobs that actually pay anything. The experience required, however, almost always involves the very expensive operation of very expensive aircraft ... which is cost-prohibitive to do by oneself. So the industry, and the entrants to the market, have accepted the premise that the actual experience itself is part of the compensation. Much like internships, apprenticeships, and other experienced-based forms of employment.
So with that said, it's rational that people might work for no direct remuneration... or even pay a small fee for the privilege. That is a line that was crossed long, long ago, and anyone who thinks this is related to the profit margins for a company isn't really thinking hard. If a business doesn't perceive adequate profit in a market, based on paying a realistic wage for its employees and all the other standard costs of business, it won't (or shouldn't) enter the market... the company president isn't feeding his kids on foodstamps and gruel because his pilots are too expensive. Period.
The rate pilots are paid is determined strictly by what pilots are willing to work for--if pilots cost a million dollars a year, a prospective entrant into the aviation business would simply tag that as part of its business analysis and decide whether the business was worthwhile. Things that needed to get flown would still get flown, although possibly not as cheaply. In short, people who accept any less than a professional wage are all equally culpable, in my eyes--whether that involves getting paid $40k, $20k, $0k or -$15k. If you examine all sorts of various markets, you'll find that a professional rate in the US's current market climate starts at $60 per hour of labor. That's a raw rate for all hours spent on a job, and should be considered as a pre-benefit rate. That's what you'd pay a consultant, or the absolute cost you'd pay for an employee, with all benefits taken into an account.
That's a bit of an extrapolated generalization, of course, but you'll find that it works out very near to almost any situation you run the numbers in. You can determine how depressed an area's business economy is by comparing its salary to that rate. You can determine a lot of things. If you look at it as a salary for a salaried employee, it comes out to ~$58-$60k/yr+benefits for 2080 hours of work.
Most of aviation is purportedly well below the bar.
Like jrh says, make your service better. Which is true. Buuuut, there are a lot of surprisingly cheap bastages out there looking to save a buck any way they can. Especially given this economy.
Current American capitalist philosophy holds that you need to screw everyone for as much money as you can possibly get. Good business used to be about cultivating long-term relationships with suppliers, customers, employees, etc, and making a reasonable profit, paying a reasonable rate for services, etc. There's a big difference between the two, and in my opinion we're staring down the business end of it.
Anyway, enough blather. Can you tell I like listening to myself type?
~Fox