The recruiters are not the ones offering the opportunity and employment. Most of the time, they are actually forcefully interposing themselves between me and that opportunity.
My "outrageous entitlement" stems from the fact that I have a specialist skill that is relatively rare, yet also highly in demand, at least for today. That combination allows me to charge more for my skill than most other workers can charge for theirs.
This means that companies may have difficulty renting that skill as a price low enough to justify the expense, as they can be outbid by other businesses. Those high-bidding businesses do not need recruiters. They publicly advertise, and get enough responses to filter their own candidate pool. The recruiter offers a company a more directed advertisement, aimed at folks who might not necessarily be looking for a particular opportunity, but might be willing to pursue it anyway.
Recruiting is advertising and sales.
We are not mocking the company offering the opportunity. If they are embarrassed, it would only be because sleazy, inept, and ignorant people, operating under the color of agency, spread the word about it.
This situation is very much like a person that offers to do all my Amazon shopping for me, who helpfully takes several hours of my time to figure out what I want, then ignores all that and buys for me everything listed in his own store, with the occasional outside purchase completed through an affiliate program. In all cases, I would be better served by declining the offer and doing my own shopping.