Those same workers could have traded in their 5000 Stellars for $50 on Stellar Forums. Everett was actively selling 5K Stellars at $50 [http://forum.stellar.org/t/i-want-to-buy-your-stellars-50-fo...], while buying them at $1 on Mechanical Turk.
If it wasn't Everett, there is a 100% guarantee that if there was money to be made, that any one of another 10,000 people would be immediately utilizing this mechanism.