A paid relationship

I have heard this question a few times in various formulations, as well as thought it myself before starting therapy. I wonder what you guys think about it, would answer to it, whatever, just a topic on my mind.

I was on a trip with a friend recently and during the few days I talked about my T sometimes. Not big discussions, more like "my T would say X" or "my T's comment on that was Y". My buddy at some point commented that he thought I value the guy's opinon too much and said: "You realize you pay this person to listen to you?"

I know this is a common thing for people to consider. I remember myself thinking before going to therapy that it's basically a sign of society's failure, we have to pay people to talk to instead of having friends to rely on (these were my thoughts).

I think my friend is coming from the place of "if you pay someone to listen, they are not actually invested in it". Which is not quite the same as what I used to think, but similar.

What would you say if a friend/important person of yours said something like that? In the moment, I was just like "yeah, I know", which is of course true, but does not really explain anything.

Personally, I nowadays think that the payment is a good thing. I do not think I pay them to care, and I actually think it's pretty hard to do that. If you see somebody once a week, at some point you can tell whether they care about you as a person or not. Influencing that with money is quite difficult.
What I pay for is that they keep their own stuff out of the room as much as possible. I mean something very specific by that, so let me explain. I do not mean not having a personal life that sometimes affects therapy (lots of people on here have Ts that have personal stuff that affects therapy, including myself). But when you can talk, it's about your experience first and foremost. For example, if a T has lost their pet a week ago and decides to work and their client has some topic with their pet, that discussion is not off limits. Let alone is there ever a day where you sit down and the first sentence is something like "I know we said we'd do your session today, but really I'm kind of down, can we just go grab coffee instead".

So, what do you guys think? Is payment a necessary evil or a roadblock?