Is this a really long way to say surveys suck?
The way I look at it, the more people that are willing to work surveys for lower incentives, the more it validates them lowering those further.
From a surveyors point of view, you want to pay less for the same result.
If people stuck to their guns and refused low wage per minutes, it would be effective in keeping the incentives decent.
But that's not realistic, because there's always someone willing to do it, even for as little as a sweepstakes entry (which may not even be real!)