If you pay people in power, as they do, people will put their heart and soul into it. Not everything is a monetary transaction, and there are better incentives.
Giving money to mods won't help their IPO roadshow or make them profitable.
If it really comes down to it, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Reddit admins just kick out all the protesting mods, finding replacements will likely be pretty easy.
Edit: Mass removal is already happening. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36412619
The mods of several large subreddits were all kicked out, leaving the subreddits unmoderated. Multiple of these removed mods are also locked out of their accounts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14eq8ip/the_entir...
