Totally agree.
I compare volunteer mods to people carrying around fire extinguishers. For a huge fire you call the fire emergency number ( stopping report flag abuse/ forum behavior requiring banning ). For tiny fires a volunteer can extinguish it before it becomes a big fire ( reversing flags/ chilling conversations/ organizing posts ).
Volunteers are especially helpful for night hours and general organizing ( forums have a lot of clutter and replies quickly go off topic ).
As for pay. Ugh. My MMO BoH only has a single Dev left after near bankruptcy so they started paying mods. The fighting among mods over pay was ridiculous ( I deserve more than X, Y didn’t mod at all in English chat, Z silenced a player and started a player vs mod flame war that lasted two weeks in PvP Chat , etc.)
Volunteer mods are paid in praise and taxed in grief. The pay is too low and the taxes too high!