Conrad, you seem to have a peculiarly skewed outlook on how a business works (and being a professional folk musician is a business like any other). Because musicians have to invest large sums of money in their business, on travel and marketing (which is what conventions are about), not to mention the cost of buying and maintaining their instruments, you seem to believe this demonstrates that they are wealthy and should therefore agree to perform for less than their true value. Whereas the reality is that they have thousands of dollars of investment and expenses to recoup before they can even start to make an actual living.

Your gripe seems to be that musicians are charging more than you can afford. However they can only charge what the market can bear - if you can't afford the market price then that's too bad. However I suspect that it's not that you don't have the money, but that you don't have enough of it left after you've pursued your other interests. Car art must be an expensive hobby, and it's clearly not one which generates much income in return.

I'm still not clear what you do for your own living, but it appears from your earlier posts that you have made certain choices about what you do and how you spend what money you have. If that doesn't leave you with enough money to afford to go to concerts and buy beer, that seems to be the result (at least in part) of your own choices in life.