Mods don't demand for it and as long as chess.com can get something for free, they will get it. This is business.
Why aren’t chess.com moderators paid?

I don’t know why the mods do the work and accept this.
This is not a non profit organization, there should be no volunteers here.
Just my humble opinion.
I can't say why there's no paid compensation of some type. However, moderators moderate when they want to and have no type of required schedule.

some mods seem to have pined for the ability to have power over others, so why would cc pay them?
i think the other, normal mods enjoy it and i believe they receive a free membership in return.


Me thinks they want to do it. I would



Chess.com doesn't really care about their forums. They have forums because any site like this is kind of supposed to have them, but it is really not important to them at all. It does not bring in any money and only a very small fraction of their users read (let alone write) here. Why would they spend extra money on something they would probably be happy to get rid of in the first place?
I don’t know why the mods do the work and accept this.
This is not a non profit organization, there should be no volunteers here.
Just my humble opinion.