Bastions: How Are We Liking Them?

I'm genuinely curious why you think that people working in the Bastion are any different from the party themselves? Because both depend entirely on others "gaining the benefit of their labour." Townsfolk or guilds hire the party to do a job, the party then spends it's money in taverns (gaining the labour of bar staff) spends it on new weapons and equipment (gaining the labour of the blacksmith) and in this case possibly have a Bastion (gaining the labour of the people in there) 

Is your problem just that the Bastion didn't require you to role play the job interview for the staff? Because unless you're running your table as an egalitarian collective the whole game is pretty much built on the exchange of gold for goods or services