If you're poor and desperate, you're probably also agreeing to devalue your own time. If you feel that netting $3/hr is a good deal, because it's better than $0

If you're poor and desperate, you're probably also agreeing to devalue your own time. If you feel that netting $3/hr is a good deal, because it's better than $0, that's one thing - but you're also enabling this thing to be generalized to others. This is rampant in the creative world. Hungry and desperate musicians racing to the bottom, because getting paid _anything_ over nothing is "better". What happens is that they're devaluing the whole industry, and suddenly "paid in exposure" is a thing. I understand that being poor can be hard, and short-term fixes can be tempting; But people need to see the whole picture.