There is a lot of reporting out there about how in poor rural communities there are doctors who basically give out diagnosis for disability or mental illness on less than factual medical grounds that qualify people to receive government benefits from, for example, the Social Security disability fund. The OP is asking what the difference between the thinly veiled fraud that is going on now is and giving a stipend when the net effect is that these people are receiving regular payments from the government.
So, bootstrappy and savvy entrepreneurs disrupting the established system to their advantage?
Because when a business skirts or even outright commits fraud against/tramples on regulations, HN tends to cheer about how the regulations had it coming. And what you are asserting happens is no different.
Generally when HN cheers someone skirting regulations, it's because the person/company is doing so to produce something of value rather than to avoid having to work.
Actually, if you read more articles about the doctors putting people on disability, it is far more nuanced.
When there are no jobs in the area, you don't have an education, and you don't have enough money to move, what option do you have? There are places in Alabama where 3/4 if the population is on disability; this is not because they are disabled, but because they have no other choice.
The difference between disability and a stipend is that you lose disability benefits the minute you engage in any productive activity, whereas the stipend dispersed by the Cherokee tribe came with no such conditions.
Unsurprisingly, people who are not prohibited from improving their lives tend to live better.
Edit: NPR did a story on it, it isn't my assertion there is actual evidence that this happens; http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/