Nothing wrong with paying the going rate for skill and talent.
Fireman, train drivers ,soldiers, nurses, all have the above in abundance and many lives in their hands under far more stressful conditions than the average Pilot encounters on a daily basis. There is a considerable difference in their salaries, and even more variance from country to country for doing the same job.
Military pilots are less well paid than civilians. Are they mugs? Perhaps they have a choice? Many have told me that they consiider civilian flying boring at the side of their Military experience,so perhaps people's expectations of t and c's as you put it vary considerably.
Back to the opening statement however.
How do you calculate the"going rate"? At the moment rates have been pushed down due to the (hopefully) temporary oversupply of Pilots and oversupply of seats.
Honestly, what do you expect to happen? The only way the industry will survive is if commonsense does prevail, and real market forces determine wages and other commodities. There are still gross international distortions created by state support in several airlines which condemn pilots to a life of uncertainty.
Astraeus is actually making sense in the mad world of airlines.