It's not just having "stuff". Without money, you have no food, no shelter. It's a very effective form of coercion: do this thing you would otherwise never do, or you and your family will starve.

Here are some points:

- It's much, much, easier to coerce someone into doing something they don't want to do when it's a legal option than when it's illegal in all circumstances.

- People in desperate situations are among the least likely to make their decisions rationally, so they might take the option even if they would have found a better one otherwise.

- It lowers the threshold of how bad things can get. Right now, if you have no money, you're in a shitty situation. With that "option", I expect a common outcome is that you take it, have a bunch of health complications and/or die, don't get compensated very well (there's a large supply of poor people like you and you're desperate, so your bargaining position is weak), and end up in an even worse situation.

- Nobody said "instead of", but there is a limited amount of attention and resources directed at getting better laws passed, and this one is extremely far down on my list of priorities.