Globalization is such a choad

Okay, Here's my spiel: Work has been slow. Like, really slow. I've been doing this professionally for over a decade, so I really don't want to have to resort to getting a "regular" job and start all over again getting paid bupkus for an honest days work. I've tried agents, but agents rarely replied to my emails and when they did, they told me that they're having a hard enough time getting work for the artists they already have on their roster.
T-shirt contest sites like www.threadless.com and www.moderntee.com have been very good to me, but I can't live off of contests.
So there are freelance sites like guru and elance that offer quick jobs for illustrators. You pay a yearly fee, and you get to bid on jobs they post on their site. Simple right?
Yeah, except for the part that in a global market, folks from China and India are charging $2 an hour or less. It doesn't matter how good you are, or how much experience you have, businesses will usually pick the lowest bid of the most adequate illustrator, even if it's awful.
Plus, there are a LOT of scumbags out there who'll try and scam the system. They'll email me and say they're considering me for the job, but they need a quick (and free) example of how I would tackle a sketch. And of course, being desperate to impress and also being a ginormous chump , I say okay and lo and behold, they never get back to me. Here's the scam: they ask the same thing from dozens of other artists, and before you know it, they've got hundreds
of pieces of free art. Inconsistent styles, but these guys aren't exactly looking for quality here.
Pretty sneaky.
Like this guy who wanted a few quick concepts of a tank underwater:

Whipped those out in a few hours, he requested some revisions, I begrudgingly revised them, and then he pulled a Keyser Söze and poof. Gone.
Seriously man, I hope that guy drowns in a bathtub filled with hobo pee.
Whoa, that's a bit harsh.
Maybe just regular pee.