I think there's something to be said for separating disdain for the person and disdain for the institution; unfortunately the latter is used as an excuse for the former.

But actually... there really are, IMO, better ways to "buy hope", or for that matter positive feelings, many of which actually have positive EV (even if not financially), and it is in my opinion a systemic flaw that we use well-known exploits in human psychology to take money from, statistically, the people who have the least.