No it's not, the community is just paying for it collectively! The players deserve a game that's better because they're still paying for it as a group instead of as individuals! Stop individualising yourselves so much that you can't even critique a product anymore!
The only purpose of the free tier is to increase the player base, exploit them for additional content, and pad out the community to create engagement - free players might as well be bots. They're scenery and props for the paying customer.
Then, the people with the disposable income for video games also have the free time to be involved in the community, so naturally they're going to take over. Inevitably the community will be dominated by people with lots of money and free time.
You even revealed it yourself - you called them "loyal dogs" because they are your class enemy. People without disposable income who play for free find that the game enshitifies over time, so they either go play something else (so there's no real incentive to stay behind in a shitty game and advocate to make it better) or stay and resent the dogs that paid to ruin the game.
There's a class element here that you're ignoring.
You've got what I said backwards. This behaviour increases as time goes on. It would decrease if those people were leaving.
Or you got what I said backwards. This behavior increases because the people who don't behave like loyal dogs all leave, because there's nothing keeping them there. This would cause brand loyalty to increase.
I don't think the free players are actually that loyal. It's the ones with money invested that behave like dogs.