Dharma Defunct?

The other day i had "Downtown" stuck in my head so i started thinking about Dharma. i've come to a couple of conclusions: Dharama obviously can't be entirely defunct for a couple of reasons. 1 - the inhabitants of the Island still receive food shipments. 2 - the inhabitants of the Island are still in communication with the outside world, otherwise Juliet would not be able to have a file on Jack. And who really thinks that the Others only have a file on Jack? i'm sure they have a file on every passenger who was on the flight. i bet they had the information right away and it's how they chose which Tailies to take. Furthermore, the Island obviously can't be a snowglobe if planes are making drops and the Pala Ferry obviously has to take recruits/team members somewhere (possible a place known as "Rescue").

The thing that i've always wondered about is the (Swan) hatch: if it was so all important for this button to be pushed 13.3 times every single day then why did they never rotate the staff as indicated in the Orientation film? Would they really put/keep people in place that they don't know they can trust if this button has to be pushed? If they're watching the hatch via camera (we know they were at the Pearl, i'm sure they could have been elsewhere, even so, why did they abandon the Pearl?) then they're going to know when people are commiting suicide and when untested individuals are becoming replacements. This entire system is suspect. There are a lot of unanswered questions here that don't entirely make sense.