No, I don't want to legalize leeching. I want to play, and I always do play. Sometimes my naked guy isn't very useful, but hey, what can I do if I run out of reserve money.
I'm not playing Defend the Virgin, but mostly Siege. Which seems to be costly sometimes, especially when levels are quickly won. I mostly like to play with a 25k build (I'm level 31 now), and try to keep 5000 money as a reserve. But yes, as I wrote this, I had managed to come down from ~5000 to almost nothing with a 25k build. So I started saving using a 2k build (red tunic, knobbed mace, leather covered shield) and still managed to lose money at times. I was almost up to 4000, when two looted items cost me ~1200 money again. With 1x, money doesn't pile up very fast. And the cheapest weapons are also almost useless, that's why I try to use looted ones.
The point about teammate weapon-swapping is a good one. So maybe the good approach is to remove looted weapons between games! I don't care if I don't get to keep a sweet weapon I don't own (and don't get to keep anyways for much longer).