Being an affiliate

I hear plenty of stories about people getting rich off Google Adsense and Amazon affiliate. Now that Typepad also is on the bandwagon, I wonder if our sense of guilt/morale/fairness has shifted fundamentally. Is making money in a stealth mode (not telling the users/clients/friends that they contribute to your financial wealth) already an accepted behavior?
Or is that we now acknowledge every click, every view might directly or indirectly make somebody richer?
I am not sure if the current trend is good or bad, I just have this itchy-weird feeling that people behave like nothing special has happened except for natural change, despite something has fundamentally shifted.