Yes, because ultimately GDP aims at measuring the value of the performance.
What is the value of a dollar, anyway? The only reason this example would be odd is if the person paid the $20k for something they did not want. Which would mean that they did something they did not want to do, perhaps under duress?
The presupposition of the GDP is that (except for things like taxes), the transactions measured are things that individuals want to do, and they get something out of that transaction that they value in dollar amounts.
The total amount of dollars at the end is irrelevant, and who has them, is less important.
The failure of the GDP is where people get "value" and the amount of value does not correspond to the dollars exchanged.
But there is also presumably value lost by the people performing, otherwise they probably wouldn't have had to be paid so much for the performance.
Let's say that the two people absolutely wouldn't have done the performance for less than $15k and absolutely wouldn't have paid more than $25k to see the other performance. Then one person is giving up $15k of value to get $20k of value for a net of +$5k and the other giving up $20k of value to get $25k of value for a net of +$5k, so it is really only a creation of $10k of value per performance while the GDP increase is $20k.
What is the value of a dollar, anyway? The only reason this example would be odd is if the person paid the $20k for something they did not want. Which would mean that they did something they did not want to do, perhaps under duress?
The presupposition of the GDP is that (except for things like taxes), the transactions measured are things that individuals want to do, and they get something out of that transaction that they value in dollar amounts.
The total amount of dollars at the end is irrelevant, and who has them, is less important.
The failure of the GDP is where people get "value" and the amount of value does not correspond to the dollars exchanged.