Starting to make sense
That doesn't mean I support paying players in an amateur league.
A downside is that it forces others to spend to compete. An ideal situation is that no team pays players (won't happen as there is a sort of prisoners dilemma situation to it). At the very least it theoretically forces other clubs to spend more to compete, taking resources away from other areas of the game.
You also say he is doing it to get into ASBP, well that is also an amateur league and I believe gets a lot of its funding from pokies based on that premise. So from that point he either breaks those rules (yes like every other franchise is) and endanger funding, or he goes to not paying players and those players leave.
I'm looking at this from a theoretical standpoint you should understand. I know it isn't all that practical for all clubs to come together and say "let's not pay players" then trust in each other not to cheat that promise. Especially when you have situations like Rapa where it is someone's personal money being used.