I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly people and companies from the developing world who work for less than minimum wage or close to it in developed countries... and the expected cost matches these sorts of rates. So it does not make sense for anyone other than the most desperate people in the first world to try to get work on these sorts of sites.

As such that sort of labor is easy to exploit. They have no bargaining power and are already working for peanuts.