We do that for the military. Society definitely has the magic OK to say that people can trade money for risk, even to life and limb. I'm also relatively certain that a very good chunk of the US military is A: Willing to risk their lives in such a situation, and B: Not going to make the absolutely batshit insane choice of stopping others who were trying to resolve said situation.

In more general terms, there's a whole bunch of jobs out there where the pay is higher because of risk to life and limb too.